
Qass. 
Book 



m- 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 




JO 






SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF 



SLAYERY; 



OR, 



THREE MONTHS AT THE SOUTH, 



IN 1854 



NEHEMIAH ADAMS, D. D. 




BOSTON: 
PQBLISHED BY T. R. MARVIN, 

AND 

B. B. MUSSEY & CO. 
1854. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by 

T. R. MARVIN, 

In the Clerk's Ol!ice of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts 



STEREOTYPED AT THE 
iiOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. 



INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT. 



Some things in the history of this book afford an illus- 
tration of the undesirableness of answering a matter before 
we hear it. A preliminary correspondence of mine with 
a southern gentleman has brought forth a singular com- 
bination of feelings and expressions, all founded on a 
mistake ; which is. that the writer of this book sought to 
conciliate a slaveholder with the proposition of a compro- 
mise between the north and south, by which northern 
opposition to slavery should be diverted and allayed. A 
plain statement may remove disagreeable feelings and 
apprehensions. 

Much of this book was written at the south. On com- 
pleting it at home, the writer wished to fortify himself in 
certain statements, and therefore wrote letters, with differ- 
ent sets of questions, to different gentlemen at the south, 
but with no intention to publish their answers. One of 
these gentlemen was Hon. H. A. Wise, of Virginia. That 
he, in his way, as the writer well knew, is a representative 
man on the subject of slavery, none will now dispute. I 
approached him fairly and honorably, I disclosed my ob- 
ject so far as was necessary to secure his attention, and I 
gained the purpose for which I wrote : so that on reading 
his letter in manuscript, and seeing that it confirmed the 
statements which I had written for my book, I acknowl- 
edged the favor in a note of thanks. The letter, read in 
private, did not offend me, because I saw that the writer 
was not combating me personally; and I thought of it 

(3) 



IV INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT. 

only in one light, — viz., as making it unnecessary for me 
to correct my manuscript, which was nearly ready for the 
press. When the correspondence afterward came forth 
from Mr. W., without my consent, in the Washington (D. 
C.) Union, his letter had a different bearing. I was placed 
in a new relation toward him, and was sorry that he com- 
pelled me to speak to him as I did in my reply. 

And now this book is the development of my wishes and 
purposes so imperfectly expressed in my private letter to 
]Mr. Wise. The book stands just as it did when I wrote 
that letter. I am not responsible for any expectations or 
disappointments with regard to this book occasioned by a 
letter which I did not write for publication, and never in- 
tended as a description of this volume. The book has 
been finished according to its first design. 

As some have held forth Mr. Wise's letter as a true ex- 
ponent of a slaveholder's spirit, it is due from me to say 
that, with that letter, I received other communications from 
southern gentlemen on the same subject. Answers to in- 
quiries, so obliging, so regardful of the supposed difficulty 
which suggested a question, so generous in affording in- 
formation, so candid, I have seldom known. Any who 
wish, may argue from them that the effect of slaveholding 
upon a gentleman's spirit and manner is eminently 
happy. 

A counterpart to Mr. Wise's letter appeared in the New 
York Independent of October 12, in an article on my cor- 
respondence with Mr. W. If the writer had waited for 
correct knowledge of the facts in the case, he might have 
written more discreetly. When I first heard of the piece, 
the whole of this book was in type. 

Watching in a sick room far from home, new affections 
are awakened toward our fellow-men ; sectional feelings 
are diminished; and every subject, public as well as pri- 
vate, is viewed in connection with our higher and enduring 
interests and relations. Under such influences many of 
these pages were written, some of them containing stric- 



INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT. V 

tures which, in a chastened state of mind, one can make 
with the consciousness of being actuated only by good 
motives. 

The thought of writing a book on this subject never 
occurred to me till I had experienced much surprise and 
pleasure at certain new impressions from slavery at the 
south. They who think that these impressions were owing 
to partial views of American slavery will see their mis- 
take. Should I relieve the minds of a few friends on this 
subject, as mine has been relieved, my labor will not be 
lost. Bat it is proper to say, that while preparing these 
pages, from the beginning to the close, things have come 
to my knowledge with regard to slavery which took away, 
at the time, the power to think or speak of it except in the 
tone of reprobation. Feelings more discriminating and 
no less just have alternated with these, and the result is 
here given. 

No one can expect to find, nor do I think to give, in 
this book, a full exposition of the subject of slavery. Yet 
I trust it will be seen that I have gathered premises broad 
enough for all the conclusions vrhich I have ventured to 
draw. 

Now, if any friend of mine, who. knowing me, knows 
that I am no partisari, will intrust himself to my guidance, 
I will take him with me in this book to the south, and we 
will together look at the things which happen to meet us, 
receive the impressions which they may naturally make, 
and if we differ and part company, we will endeavor to do 
so with mutual respect and atiectiori. 



CONTENTS 



Introductory Statement, 



Chaptee 

I. - 



Feelings and Expectations on going to 
THE South, 



II. — Arrival and First Impressions, 

III. — New Views of the Relations of the 

Slaves, 

IV. — Favorable Appearances in Southern So- 

ciety AND IN Slavery, .... 

Good Order. — The Dress of the Slaves. — 
The Children of the Slaves. — Labor and 
Privileges. — Personal Protection. — Pre- 
vention of Crime. 

V. — Subject continued, 

Absence of Mobs. — Personal Liberty. — Ab- 
sence of popular Delusions. 

VI. — Subject continued. 

Absence of Pauperism. — Wages of Labor 
— Religious Instruction. — ReA-iew. 

VII. — Revolting Features of Slavery, 

Slave Auctions. — Domestic Slave Trade. 

VIII. — Subject continued, 

Homes of the Slaves. — Domestic Evils de- 
plored by the Whites. — Review. 

(vu) 



PAGE 

8 



7-14 
15—19 

20—23 

24— i3 



44—46 



47—63 



64—81 



82—99 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

Chapxer page 

IX. — Approaches to Emancipation, . . . 100 — 114 

X. — "What shall we do ? 115—136 

Dissolution of the Union an Absurdity. — 
Results to be expected from Emancipation. 
— Social Divisions deplored. — Return to 
the Constitution, 

XL — New possible Issues on the Subject of 

Slavery, 137—146 

XII. — Dissuasive from Interference with the 

South, 147—157 

XIII. — Influence of Uncle Tom's Cabin at Home 

AND Abroad, 158—179 

XIV. — British Interest in American Slavery, . 180 — 189 

XV. — The Bible and Slavery, .... 190—201 

XVI. — Feelings of Slaves, and Feelings for the 

Slaves, contrasted, 203 — 207 

XVII. — Cheerful Vieavs. — Conclusion, . . 208 — 214 



SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OE SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER I. 



FEELINGS AND EXPECTATIONS ON GOING TO THE 
SOUTH. 

It was well said by Hev. John Newton, of London, 
that Job and his friends might have continued their dis- 
pute to the present time, if they had lived so long, unless 
God had interposed to settle the controversy. 

Good men, conscientiously persuaded of the truth and 
importance of their respective partial views of a great 
subject, pleading for God, and therefore convinced, each 
of them, that the Most High is on his side, cannot yield 
one to the other without doing violence to their con- 
sciences. 

Some new development, some providential disclosure, 
must be made to withdraw their thoughts from the 
issue which, they insist, is the only one of which the sub- 
ject is capable ; otherwise, that which was mere contra- 
riety of opinion grows to alienation and strife, of which 
no one sees the end. 

He who proposes to write or speak at the present 
time on the subject w^hich has so long tried the patience 
of good men as the subject of slavery has done, is justi- 

(7) 



8 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

fied in asking attention only by the conviction which it 
is supposed he feels that he can afford some help. 

The writer has lately spent three months at the south 
for the health of an invalid. Few professional men at 
the north had less connection with the south by ties of 
any kind than he, when the providence of God made it 
necessary to become for a while a stranger in a strange 
land. He was too much absorbed by private circum- 
stances to think of entering at all into a deliberate con- 
sideration of any important subject of a public nature ; 
yet for this very reason, perhaps, the mind was better 
prepared to receive dispassionately the impressions which 
were to be made upon it. The impressions thus made, 
and the reflections which spontaneously arose, the writer 
here submits, not as a partisan, but as a Christian ; not 
as a northerner, but as an American ; not as a politician, 
but as a lover and friend of the colored race. Having 
unexpectedly experienced help and relief in some de- 
gree in contemplating the subject, perhaps others may 
be assisted by noticing the process through which it was 
derived. To give information about slavery, to depict 
scenes at the south, to add any thing to the almost num- 
berless discussions of the subject, is not the object of 
this book. 

I will relate the impressions and expectations with 
which I went to the south ; the manner in which things 
appeared to me in connection with slavery in Georgia, 
South CaroUna, and Virginia ; the correction or confir- 
mation of my northern opinions and feelings ; the conclu- 
sions to which I was led ; the way in which our language 
and whole manner toward the south have impressed me ; 
and the duty which it seems to me, as members of the 
Union, we at the north owe to the subject of slavery and 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. VJ 

to the south, and with the south to the colored race. I 
shall not draw upon fictitious scenes and feelings, but 
shall give such statements as I would desire to recei^'e 
from a friend to whom I should put the question, " What 
am I to believe ? How am I to feel and act ? " 

In the few instances in which I do not speak from 
personal observation, I shall quote from men whom, in 
many places at home and abroad, I have learned to re- 
spect very highly for their intellectual, moral, and social 
qualities — I mean physicians. Associated with all 
classes at all times, knowing things not generally ob- 
served, and being removed by their profession from any 
extensive connection with slavery as a means of wealth, 
they have seemed to me unusually qualified to testify on 
the subject, and their o^^inions I have found to be emi- 
nently just and fair. 

Very early in my visit at the south, agreeable im- 
pressions Avere made upon me, which soon begiin to be 
interspersed with impressions of a different kind in look- 
ing at slavery. The reader will bear this in mind, and 
not suppose, at any one point in the narrative, that I am 
giving results not to be qualified by subsequent state- 
ments. The feelings awakened by each new disclosure 
or train of reflection are stated without waiting for any 
thing which may follow. 



Just before leaving home, several things had prepared 
me to feel a special interest in going to the south. 

The last thing which I did out of doors before leaving 
Boston was, to sign the remonstrance of the New England 
clergymen against the extension of slavery into the 



10 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

contemplated territories of Nebraska and Kansas. I had 
assisted in framing that remonstrance. The last thing 
which I happened to do late at night before I began my 
journey was, to provide something for a freed slave on 
his way to Liberia, who was endeavoring to raise several 
thousand dollars to redeem his wife and children from 
bondage. My conversations relating to this slave and 
his family had filled me with new but by no means 
strange distress, and the thought of looking slavery in 
the face, of seeing the things which had so frequently 
disturbed my self-possession, was by no means pleasant. 
To the anticipation of all the afflictive sights which I 
should behold there was added the old despair of seeing 
any Avay of relieving this fearful evil, while the unavail- 
ing desire to find it, excited by the actual sight of wrongs 
and woe, I feared would make my residence at the south 
painful. 

Behind the tables at the hotel in New York, on my 
way south, stood a row of black waiters — no unusual 
sight to me, indeed ; but with my thoughts of the south 
and the slaves, it assumed new interest. I connected 
them in my thoughts with the slaves. They seemed 
like straggUng cinders at no great distance from the 
burning house which I was about to see. New sym- 
pathy for the slave was excited by their \'isages. If 
these who are free wear such dreary looks as my own 
thoughts imparted to them, how^ fearful must be the 
faces of the bondmen ! I felt that I was in the entrance 
w^ay to the home of a race who would excite in me only 
sorrow. 

On board the steamship from New York to Savannah, 
white faces took the place of the black complexion which 
had become identified with servino- men. "\Ye belons; 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 11 

to a slave State, was the obvious reason given for this 
substitution. Free negroes could not be received at the 
southern port; slaves belonging to the steamer could 
not be trusted at New York ; hence those white servants, 
whose faces, to an eye which retained the recent im- 
pression of shining black skin, looked paler than ever. 

"We had been three days in a southern steamer, and 
had sailed by Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and 
South Carolina, and had seen no slave. Tlie sight was 
yet in reserve ; curiosity, sympathy, pity, the whole as- 
semblage of northern fancies and feelings which gather 
together at the mention of a slave, were " all hands on 
deck" as we entered Savannah River. Climate now 
ceased to be the only object of interest connected with 
the south. There lay the rice plantations ; but where 
were the slaves ? Some feeling of dread was mingled 
with curiosity. Cowper's lines, learned and declaimed 
so often in boyhood, came to mind : — 

" for a lodge in some vast Avilderness," &c., 

" I would not have a slave to till my ground," &c., 

with the poet's enumeration of cruelties and horrors. 
The anticipation of hearing those groans which three 
millions of our fellow-countrymen are represented in 
our Fourth of July orations, and which I had m}self in- 
such an oration many years ago represented, as sending 
up to Heaven day and night, and the clanking of those 
chains which on such occasions are said to be mingling 
with John Adams's category of joyfid noises forever to 
usher in the nation's birthday, and the confident expec- 
tation of seeing at the landing, or in passing through the 
market-place, a figure like the common touching vignette 



12 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

of a naked negro on one knee, with manacled hands 
raised imploringly and saying, " Am I not a man and 
brother ? " had made the thought of reaching the south 
increasingly painful. 

" So you are going south," said a good friend in Bos- 
ton. " Well," he continued, " you will, I suppose, have 
your feelings of humanity strongly appealed to many 
a time." I felt afraid to trust myself in scenes such as 
I had heard described ; yet, as we came near Savannah, 
there was a natural impatience to see and feel the dire- 
ful object of so much anticipation. 

Within five miles of Savannah the steamer ran 
aground, in the early fog of a warm day ; and as the tide 
was ebbing, there seemed to be for the time no relief, 
except as the agents in the city might learn our situa- 
tion through their spyglasses, or a passing boat report 
us. The Florida steamer came alongside, took off 
some passengers for Florida, and left us with our paddle 
wheels out of water, and not even a slave to pity and 
help us, and to be an object of pity, from me at least, in 
.return. 

A steam tug returning from the mouth of the river 
came alongside about noon, and took the passengers and 
their baggage to the city. 

On board this tug I looked for the first time in my 
life upon a slave. All hands on board were slaves. 
As the boat labored up the stream, I had leisure to in- 
dulge my eyes and thoughts in looking at them. Two, 
with unquestionable marks of servitude in their whole 
appearance, were talking together in the stern of the 
boat, the broad brims of their old black hats flapping in 
the wind over their faces, hiding partly the glances 
which they gave me as they noticed my interested looks 



A SOUTH-SIDE YIEW OF SLAVERY. 13 

at them. One of them whispered coYertly to the other, 
and both smiled with a kindly look. It was a different 
look from that which you receive in a prison yard, where 
shame and pain steal out in quick, uneasy glances. I 
felt impelled to speak with them, but was not yet suffi- 
ciently at home. 

In the growth of the human mind, fancy takes the 
lead of observation, and through life it is always run- 
ning ahead of it. Who has not been greatly amused, 
sometimes provoked, and sometimes, perhaps, been 
made an object of mirth, at the preconceived notions 
which he had formed of an individual, or place, or com- 
ing event ? Who has not sometimes prudently kept his 
fancies to himself? Taking four hundred ministers of 
my denomination in Massachusetts, and knowing how 
we all converse, and preach, and pray about slavery, and 
noticing since my return from the south the questions 
which are put, and the remarks which are made upon 
the answers, it will be safe to assert that on going south 
I had at least the average amount of information and 
ignorance with regard to the subject. Some may affect 
to wonder even at the httle which has now been dis- 
closed of my secret fancies. I should have done the 
same in the case of another ; for the creduhty or sim- 
plicity of a friend, when expressed or exposed, generally 
raises self-satisfied feelings in the most of us. Our 
southern friends, on first witnessing our snow stormy, 
sleigh rides, and the gathering of our ice crops, are full 
as simple as we are in a first visit among them. We 
"suffer fools gladly, seeing" that we ourselves "are wise." 
Some intelligent men at the south, who have never seen 
Lowell, will speak of our " operatives " in a way to ex- 
cite quite as much mirth as their northern visitors occa- 



14 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

sion. We both need forbearance and charity one from 
the other. 

How to say enough of preconceived notions respect- 
ing slavery, so as to compare subsequent impressions 
with them, and yet not enough to give southern friends 
room to exult and say that we all have false and exag- 
gerated notions about slavery, is somewhat difficult. At 
the risk of disagreeable imputations, and with a desire 
to be honest and ingenuous, I will merely add, that there 
was one thing which I felt sure that I should see on 
landing, viz., the whole black population cowed down. 
This best expresses in a word my expectation. " I am a 
slave," will be indented on the faces, limbs, and actions 
of the bondmen. Hopeless woe, entreating yet despair- 
ing, will frequently greet me. How could it be other- 
wise, if slavery be such as our books, and sermons, and 
lectures, and newspaper articles represent? nay, if 
southern papers themselves, especially their advertise- 
ments, are to be relied upon as sources of correct im- 
pressions ? 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 15 



CHAPTER II. 

ARRIVAL AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 

The steam tug reached tlie landing, and the slaves 
were all about us. One tiling immediately surprised 
me ; they were all in good humor, and some of them in 
a broad laugh. The delivery of every trunk from the 
tug to the wharf was the occasion of some hit, or rep- 
artee, and every burden was borne with a jolly word, 
grimace, or motion. The lifting of one leg in laughing 
seemed as natural as a Frenchman's shrug. I asked one 
of them to place a trunk with a lot of baggage ; it Avas 
done; up went the hand to the hat — "Any thing more, 
please sir ? " TThat a contrast, I involuntarily said to 
myself, to that troop at the Albany landing on our West- 
em Railroad ! and on those piles of boards, and on the 
roofs of the sheds, and at the piers, in New York ! I 
began to like these slaves. I began to laugh with them. 
It was irresistible. Who could have convinced me, an 
hour before, that slaves could have any other effect upon 
me than to make me feel sad ? One fellow, in all the 
hurry and bustle of landing us, could not help relating 
how, in jumping on board, his boot was caught between 
two planks, and " pulled clean off ; " and how " dis ole 
feller went clean over into de wotter," with a shout, as 
though it was a merry adventure. 

One thing seemed clear; they were not so much 
2 



16 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

cowed down as I expected. Perhaps, however, they 
were a fortunate set. I rode away, expecting soon to 
have some of my disagreeable anticipations verified. 

In pursuance of the plan indicated in the beginning, 
I shall now relate the impressions which were invol- 
untarily made upon me while residing in some of the 
slave States. As before mentioned, I was making no 
deliberate investigations, and had no theory to maintain ; 
but the things which daily passed before me led to 
■reflections and conclusions, which will appear, some of 
them, as we proceed, but more especially in the review. 
Should these pages meet the eyes of any to whom the 
things here described are perfectly familiar, they will 
read them with forbearance, and remember that the 
writer's object is not to give descriptions, but just to 
relate those things Avhich led him to certain reflections 
and conclusions ; these conclusions alone, so far as they 
may be useful, constituting the purpose of the book. 

All things being arranged at your resting-place, the 
first impulse is to see how the land lies, settle certain 
landmarks, and, above all things, find the post-office. 

The city of Savannah abounds in parks, as they are 
■called — squares, fenced in, with trees. Young children 
and infants were there, with very respectable colored 
nurses — young women, with bandanna and plaid cam- 
bric turbans, and superior in genteel appearance to any 
similar class, as a whole, in .any of our cities. They 
could not be slaves. Are they slaves ? " Certainly," 
says the friend at your side ; " they each belong to some 
master or mistress." 

In behalf of a score of mothers of my acquaintance, 
and of some fathers, I looked with covetous feelings 
upon the relation which I saw existed between these 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 17 

nurses and children. These women seemed not to have 
the air and manner of hirelings in the care and treat- 
ment of the children ; their conversation with them, the 
degree of seemingly maternal feeling which was infused 
into their whole deportment, could not fail to strike a 
casual observer. 

Then these are slaves. Their care of the children, 
even if it be slave labor, is certainly equal to that 
which is free. 

" But that was a freeman who just passed us ? " 

" No ; he is Mr. W.'s servant, near us." 

" He a slave ? " Such a rhetorical lifting of the arm, 
such a line of grace as the hand described in descending 
easily from the hat to the side, such a glow of good feel- 
ing on recognizing neighbor B., with a supplementary 
act of respect to the stranger with him, were wholly 
foreign from my notions of a slave. " Where are your 
real slaves, such as we read of ? " 

" These are about a fair sample." 

" But they seem to me like your best quotations of 
cotton ; where are your ' ord., mid. fair to fair, dam- 
aged, and poor ' ? " 

Our fancies with regard to the condition of the slaves 
proceed from our northern repugnance to slavery, stim- 
ulated by many things that we read. The every-day 
life, the whole picture of society at the south, is not pre- 
sented to us so frequently — indeed it cannot be, nor can 
it strike the mind as strongly — as slave auctions and sep- 
arations of families, fugitives hiding in dismal swamps, 
and other things which appeal to our sensibilities. 
Whatever else may be true of slavery, these things, we 
say, are indisputable ; and they furnish materials for the 
fancy to build into a world of woe. 



18 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

Without supposing that I had yet seen slavery, it 
was nevertheless true that a load was lifted from my 
mind by the first superficial look at the slaves in the 
city. 

It was as though I had been let down by necessity 
into a cavern which I had peopled with disagreeable 
sights, and, on reaching bottom, found daylight streaming 
in, and the place cheerful. 

A better-looking, happier, more courteous set of peo- 
ple I had never seen, than those colored men, women, 
and children whom I met the first few days of my stay 
in Savannah. It had a singular effect on my spirits. 
They all seemed glad to see me. I was tempted with 
some vain feelings, as though they meant to pay me 
some special respect. It was all the more grateful, 
because for months sickness and death had covered 
almost every thing, even the faces of friends at home, 
with sadness to my eye, and my spirits had drooped. 
But to be met and accosted with such extremely civil, 
benevolent looks, to see so many faces break into pleas- 
ant smiles in going by, made one feel that he was not 
alone in the world, even in a land of strangers. 

How such unaffected politeness could have been 
learned under the lash I did not understand. It con- 
flicted with my notions of slavery. I could not have 
dreamed that these people had been " down trodden," 
" their very manhood crushed out of them," " the galling 
yoke of slavery breaking every human feeling, and re- 
ducing them to the level of brutes." It was one of the 
pleasures of taking a walk to be greeted by all my 
colored friends. I felt that I had taken a whole new 
race of my fellow-men by the hand. I took care to 
notice each of them, and get his full smile and saluta- 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 19 

tion ; many a time I would gladly have stopped and 
paid a good price for a certain " good morning," cour- 
tesy, and bow ; it was worth more than gold ; its charm 
consisted in its being unbought, unconstrained, for I was 
an entire stranger. Timidity, a feeling of necessity, 
the leer of obliged deference, I nowhere saw ; but the 
artless, free, and easy manner which burdened spirits 
never wear. It was difficult to pass the colored people 
in the streets without a smile awakened by the magnet- 
ism of their smiles. Let any one at the north, afflicted 
with depression of spirits, drop down among these ne- 
groes, walk these streets, form a passing acquaintance 
with some of them, and unless he is a hopeless case, he 
will find himself in moods of cheerfulness never awak- 
ened surely by the countenances of the whites in any 
strange place. Involuntary servitude did not present 
itself to my eye or thoughts during the two weeks which 
I spent in Savannah, except as I read advertisements 
in the papers of slaves for sale. 

How the appearance of the colored people in villages 
and plantation districts would compare with that of city 
household servants, was a question which was reserved 
for future observation. 



20 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER III. 

NEW VIEWS OF THE RELATIONS OF THE SLAVES. 

The gentleman at whose house I was guest com- 
manded the military battalion. The parade day oc- 
curred during my visit. Three bands came successively 
within an hour in the morning to salute him. These 
bands were composed of slaves, so called ; but never did 
military bands suggest the idea of involuntary servitude 
less, or feel servitude of any kind for the time less, than 
these black warriors. They approached with their 
quickstep tunes, formed in front of the dwelling, faced 
the street, (a respectful manoeuvre, unlike our salutes, 
which make us all face the music,) performed their sa- 
lute, and marched off in good style. Their personal 
appearance was in several instances very striking. One 
of the bass drummers was a fine specimen of the hu- 
man frame, his points set off by his tight military dress, 
while a pair of green periscopic spectacles gave an addi- 
tional touch to his looks. There was nothing grotesque 
in their appearance, nothing corresponding to Ethiopic 
minstrelsy in our northern caricatures ; any military 
company at the north would have feelings of respect for 
their looks and performances. 

Going out with a friend to see the line formed, he 
asked me to accept a cane for the walk. On declining, 
I was pressed to take it by the remark that I surely 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 21 

would if I would read the inscription : " From the live 
oak of the frigate Constitution, presented," &c. What 
had Georgians to do with that frigate, I said to myself, 
the frigate which was the pride and boast of us Massa- 
chusetts boys in the war ? 

The thought of our family of States came over me, 
our States like the sea, " its waves many, its waters one," 
each claiming the frigate Constitution as hers, " gallant 
Hull " hers, our whole naval renown hers. Cords of 
love stronger than death holds us together ; when the 
attempt to break our Union begins to draw upon these 
secret bands, they will be found invincible. Petulant, 
angry members of the household will frequently threaten, 
like passionate children, to leave the house. Let them 
try. They will find secret weaknesses and childlike re- 
lentings interfering with their sturdy anger, and tears 
will start unbidden in better moments. 

As the line was forming on " the Bay," the tender of 
a locomotive happened to be drawn along on trucks, be- 
tween the spectators and the military, on its way to the 
railroad station. The name of the engine and tender, 
in large letters, on the tender, was NEW HAMP- 
SHIRE. My New England feelings arose and glowed 
within me. It was weak, perhaps, to feel any thing Hke 
a tear, even of pleasure ; but the sudden presentation of 
a proud New England name, the momentary commin- 
gling there in Georgia of north and south, the kind 
blending of Nebraska and Anti-Nebraska in that acci- 
dental meeting, the easy, home feeling with which the 
New Hampshire took the liberty to pass along in the 
midst of the pageant, and many other similar thoughts 
and feelings, made me reflect what a death it would be 
if our Union should suffer fratricide or suicide. 



22 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

The commander of the military on this occasion, though 
still justly claiming to be a young man, led the Georgia 
detachment of troops to our north-eastern frontier during 
our trouble respecting the boundary question. Maine 
and Georgia were the same country to him. Should 
the north ever need Georgia soldiers to battle against 
a common foe, the hands of one who has no superior in 
all that constitutes a Christian lady wiU, with the old 
southern patriotism, tie his sash for him as she did on 
that morning of the parade. 

The tender (but let no one play upon the word from 
the effect of the cumbersome thing on my feelings) be- 
ing out of the way, the bands wheeled into marching 
order, and the battalion went to the parade ground to 
the music of those colored men, affording a northerner 
some novel and pleasant thoughts. It was one of the 
last things which I had expected to see — the soldiers 
of the south following the music made by such men, 
their step enlivened, their spii-its cheered by them. It 
was good and pleasant to see them in that unity, the 
proverbial love of music in the colored race being per- 
mitted to gratify itself in discoursing martial sounds to 
their masters. 

When I awoke the next mornmg, I found that a slight 
frost had touched some of my northernmost fancies 
about the slaves. I knew that I had much yet to learn ; 
but I had thus far seen things which had never been re- 
lated to me, and I took into my reckoning terms which 
I had wholly neglected in trying to work out at home 
the problem of human happiness at the south. 

If it be less romantic, it is more instructive, to see the 
fire department of a southern city composed of col- 
ored men in their company uniforms, parading, and in 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 23 

times of service working, with all the enthusiasm of 
Philadelphia or Boston firemen. Thus it is given to 
the colored population of some cities and towns at the 
south to protect the dwellings and stores of the city 
against fire — the dwellings and property of men who, 
as slave owners, are regarded by many at the north with 
feelings of commiseration, chiefly from being exposed, 
as we imagine, to the insurrectionary impulses of an 
oppressed people. To organize that people into a pro- 
tective force, to give them the largest liberty at times 
when general consternation and confusion would afford 
them the best opportunities to execute seditionary and 
murderous purposes, certainly gave me, as a northerner, 
occasion to think that whatever is true theoretically, and 
whatever else may be practically true, with regard to 
slavery, the relations and feelings between the white 
and colored people at the south were not wholly as I 
had imagined them to be. These two instances of confi- 
dence and kindness gave me feelings of affection for 
the blacks and respect for their masters. Not a word 
had been said to me about slavery ; my eyes taught me 
that some practical things in the system are wholly dif- 
ferent from my anticipations. " I saw it, and received 
instruction." 



24 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEAY OF SLAVERY. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

FAYORABLE APPEARANCES IN SOUTHERN SOCIETY 
AND IN SLAYERY. 

When we find ourselves to have been under wrong 
impressions, and begin to have our notions corrected, our 
disposition is to reach an opposite extreme, and to see 
things in a light whose glare is as false as the previous 
twilight. I resolved to watch my feelings in this respect, 
and take the true gauge of this subject. 

Section I. — Good Order. 

The streets of southern cities and towns immediately 
struck me as being remarkably quiet in the evening and 
at night. 

" What is the cause of so much quiet ? " I said to a 
friend. 

"Our colored people are mostly at home. After 
eight o'clock they cannot be abroad without a written 
pass, which they must show on being challenged, or go 
to the guard house. The master must pay fifty cents 
for a release. White policemen in cities, and in towns 
patrols of white citizens, walk the streets at night." 

Here I received my first impression of interference 
with the personal liberty of the colored people. The 
white servants, if there be any, the boys, the appren- 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 25 

tices, the few Irish, have liberty ; the colored men are 
under restraint. 

But though I saw that this was a feature of slavery, 
I did not conclude that it would be well to dissolve the 
Union in order to abolish it. Apart from the question 
of slavery, it was easy to see that to keep such a part 
of the population out of the streets after a reasonable 
hour at night, preventing their unrestrained, promiscu- 
ous roving, is a great protection to them, as well as to 
the public peace. In attending evening worship, in 
visiting at any hour, a written jDass is freely given ; so 
that, after all, the bondage is theoretical, but still it is 
bondage. Is it an illustration, I asked myself, of other 
things in slavery, which are theoretically usurpations, 
but practically benevolent ? 

From the numbers in the streets, though not great, 
you would not suspect that the blacks are restricted at 
night ; yet I do not remember one instance of rudeness 
or unsuitable behavior among them in any place. Around 
the drinking saloons there were white men and boys 
whose appearance and behavior reminded me of " hberty 
and pursuit of happiness " in similar places at the north ; 
but there were no colored men there : the slaves are 
generally free as to street brawls and open drunkenness. 
I called to mind a place at the north whose streets every 
evening, and especially on Sabbath evenings, are a nui- 
sance. If that place could enforce a law forbiddmg cer- 
tain youths to be in the streets after a certain hour with- 
out a pass from their employers, it would do much to 
raise them to an equality in good manners with their 
more respectable colored fellow-men at the south. I 
had occasion to pity some white southerners, as they issued 
late at night from a drinking-place, in being deprived of 



26 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

the wholesome restraint laid upon the colored population. 
The moral and religious character of the colored people 
at the south owes very much to this restraint. 

Putting aside for the time all thoughts of slavery, I 
indulged myself in thinking and feeling, here is strong 
government. It has a tonic, bracing effect upon one's 
feelings to be in its atmosphere ; and as Charles Lamb 
tells us not to inquire too narrowly of every mendicant 
whether the " wife and six young children " are a fiction, 
but to give, and enjoy it, so there was a temptation to 
disregard for the time the idea of slavery, and, becom- 
ing a mere utilitarian, to think of three miUions of our 
population as being under perfect control, and in this 
instance indisputably to their benefit. 

The first instance in which I saw slaves, men and 
women, acting m an associated capacity, was in a colored 
choir. My object in speaking of this will appear in 
the sequel. "Would that some of my musical friends 
could enjoy the performances of that choir at that church. 
A tall, stout negro, with an intelligent face, rose to sing, 
and his choir stood up. He doubled back his little hymn 
book in one hand, and held the singing book, doubled 
back also, in the other, both at arm's length. He put 
one foot in the chair where he had been sitting, as though 
for greater purchase, and then pitched the tune with 
marked distinctness, giving all the parts. Off he started 
with an explosive note that waked up every echo, be- 
ginning, as directed, at the third verse, — 

** Fools never raise their thoughts so high." 

His arms, his bended knee, his whole body, were instinct 
with feeling. He made, perhaps, three times as many 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 27 

notes as were written, counting his slurs, and his division 
of white-faced notes into the due allowance of pointed 
ones, with other embellishments, all so exciting that the 
short yellow girl, the principal alto, with round face and 
neat attire, standing next to him, feeling the windage of 
his motions and the interruption to the movement by 
his crotchets and fancies, stopped singing, shook with 
an internal laugh, with an occasional heat-lightning be- 
trayal of her beautiful white teeth, which she covered 
as quick as possible to conceal her mirth. She showed 
wonderful self-control, and finally succeeded in carrying 
her part ; but at the next singing, she and the other 
girls removed to the other side of the pillar, which they 
left between themselves and the leader in self-defence. 
He was all the time solemn and devout ; his wish evi- 
dently being fulfilled, that his heart, whatever might be 
said of his voice, might " in tune be found." An elderly 
negro with white hair, his head thrown back ; an intensely 
black man, of towering stature, in a Petersham coat ; a 
genteel youth with master's plaid cassimere riding jacket; 
and a few women, conspired to sing the hymn with an 
effect deeply impressive and edifying, however much 
some of the features in the performance might tend for 
a moment to divert the feelings. No sooner was the 
benediction pronounced than, in keeping with the custom 
in some white congregations of interrupting the thoughts 
of the retiring audience by boisterous organ playing, 
this choir started a select piece : — 

" Hark ! the vesper h}TBn is stealing," &c. 

It being not much after twelve at noon, this vesper was 
as little appropriate as the organ playing just mentioned, 



28 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

but was sanctioned by the practice of those whose ex- 
ample the blacks follow for good or ill. 

The impression here made upon me, or rather con- 
firmed and illustrated afresh, was, that the slaves, so far 
as I had seen, were unconscious of any feehng of re- 
straint ; the natural order of life proceeded with them ; 
they did not act like a driven, overborne people, stealing 
about with sulky looks, imbruted by abuse, crazed, stu- 
pidly melancholic. People habitually miserable could 
not have conducted the musical service of public wor- 
ship as they did ; their looks and manner gave agreeable 
testimony that, in spite of their condition, they had 
sources of enjoyment and ways of manifesting it wliich 
suggested to a spectator no thought of involuntary ser- 
vitude. My theory was, that they ought to be perpetu- 
ally unhappy. I tried to persuade myself that they 
were. Ten thousands of people are miserable on their 
account, and my wonder was, that the slaves themselves 
were not continually verifying and warranting all the 
distress of which they are the occasion. This is one of 
those northern fancies which ought not to be confessed, 
if one has much regard to being ridiculed at the south, 
and mourned over by some at the north. 

Though not having as yet gone so far in looking 
at slavery as Goldsmith's Traveler had wandered in 
seeking for the best state of society, I w^s nevertheless 
reminded, more than once, of the conclusion to which 
he came on his return to England, — 



" In every government, though terrors reign, 
Though tjTant kings or tyrant laws restrain, 
How small, of all that human hearts endure, 
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure ! " 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 29 

In churches generally, the colored people occupy the 
galleries, sometimes including that portion which with 
us is used by the choir, the singers in such cases sitting 
below. As a preacher and as a hearer, I have had op- 
portunities to witness their appearance in public worship, 
and in no case have I seen inattention or sleep. With 
much fixedness of posture, the face frequently resting 
on the hand, with the elbow on the rail, some standing, 
all looking at the speaker, they were an example of de- 
corum, and of that demeanor which encourages a public 
speaker. In an audience in which a large number of 
colored people were sitting in the gallery opposite the 
pulpit, it being somewhat dark, I noticed occasional 
quiet disclosures of white teeth, like fireflies after dark, 
as feelings of gratification in one and another, at some 
affecting expression in the sermon, made them smile. 

My surprise and pleasure experienced a high tide as 
I noticed something which I may find it difficult to make 
some of my readers understand, or believe. 

Coming out of church the first Sabbath which I spent 
in a country village, I saw a group of colored men 
standing under the trees around the house, waiting for 
the rest of the people to pass out. I could not be mis- 
taken in my impression from their looks that they were 
Christian men. Their countenances were intelligent 
and happy ; but the thing to which I allude, and of which 
these men gave me my first impression, was, the di-ess 
of the slaves. 



Section II. — The Dress of the Slaves. 

To see slaves with broadcloth suits, well-fitting and 
nicely-ironed fine shirts, pohshed boots, gloves, umbrellas 



30 A SOUTH-SIDE YIEW OF SLAVEET. 

for sunshades, the best of hats, their young men with 
their blue coats and bright buttons, in the latest style, 
white Marseilles vests, white pantaloons, brooches in 
their shirt bosoms, gold chains, elegant sticks, and some 
old men leaning on their ivory and silver-headed staves, 
as respectable in their attire as any who that day went 
to the house of God, was more than I was prepared to 
see. As to that group of them under the trees, had I 
been unseen, I would have followed my impulse to shake 
hands with the whole of them, as a vent to my pleasure 
in seeing slaves with all the bearing of respectable, dig- 
nified Christian gentlemen. As it was, I involuntarily 
lifted my hat to them, which was responded to by them 
with such smiles, uncovering of the head, and graceful 
salutations, that, scribe or Pharisee, I felt that I did love 
such greetings in the market-places from such people. 

Then I fell into some reflections upon the philosophy 
of dress as a powerful means of securing respect, and 
thought how impossible it must soon become to treat 
with indignity men who respected themselves, as these 
men evidently did ; nay, rather, how impossible it al- 
ready was for masters who would so clothe their ser- 
vants to treat them as cattle. Further acquaintance 
with that place satisfied me that this inference was right. 
There is one southern town, at least, where it would be 
morally as impossible for a good servant to be reckless- 
ly sold, or to be violently separated from his family, or 
to be abused with impunity, as in any town at the 
north. 

On seeing these men in their Sabbath attire, and feel- 
ing toward them as their whole appearance compelled 
me to do, I understood one thing which before was not 
explained. I had always noticed that southerners sel- 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 31 

dom used tlie word slaves in private conversation. I 
supposed that it was conscience that made them change 
the word, as they had also omitted it in the Constitution 
of the United States. But I was soon unable to use 
the word myself in conversation, after seeing them in 
their Sabbath dress, and as my hearers, and in families ; 
their appearance and condition in so great a proportion 
making the idea connected with the word slave incom- 
patible with the impressions received from them. Let 
no one draw sweeping conclusions from these remarks, 
but wait till we have together seen and heard other 
things, and in the mean time only gather from what has 
been said that our fancies respecting the colored people 
at the south, as well as their masters, are not all of them, 
probably, correct. 

But the women, the colored women, in the streets on 
the Sabbath, put my notions respecting the appearance 
of the slaves to utter discomfiture. At the north an 
elegantly-dressed colored woman excites mirth. Every 
northerner knows that this is painfully true. Gentlemen, 
ladies, boys, and girls never pass her without a feeling 
of the ludicrous ; a feeling which is followed in some — 
would it were so in all — by compunction and shame. It 
was a pleasant paradox to find that where the colored 
people are not free, they have in man}^ things the most 
liberty, and among them the liberty to di-ess handsome- 
ly, and be respected in it. 

You do not see the tawdriness of color, the super- 
fluity of yellow, the violations of taste in the dress of 
the colored women at the south to the degree which you 
observe in some other places. One reason, if not the 
chief, is, they each have a mistress, a matron, or young 
lady, to advise and direct them, and to be responsible in 
3 



82 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

the community for their good appearance. They also 
wear fabrics and millmery which either good taste, or, 
at least, means superior to theirs, originally selected for 
the use of their mistresses and white members of the 
family. It may seem extravagant to some, but the pride 
we have in the respectable appearance of children is 
felt by southern mistresses with regard to their servants. 
A grotesque, ill-fashioned dress on a female servant ap- 
pearing in public on the Sabbath, would be sure to be a 
subject of a hint from a neighbor or friend. My previ- 
ous images of slaves were destroyed by the sight of those 
women with dresses which would have been creditable 
to the population of any town at the north. The most 
surprising sight of all, as an evidence of real refinement 
and good taste, was, here and there, a simple straw 
bonnet with a plain white ribbon, and a black silk dress. 
Such is the ordinary appearance of the women in a 
country town on the Sabbath, and indeed in the cities 
Fashion hardly stretches her influence further. Mixed 
with these specimens of the putting on of apparel are 
seen, of course, very plain, humble clothing and turbans, 
and instances of great neglect in dress. 

It must be observed that these people, men and wo- 
men, were country people, many of them plantation 
hands. The difference between them and city slaves 
was only superficial. 

Section III. — The Children of the Slaves. 

But of all the touching sights of innocence and love 
appealmg to you unconsciously for your best feelings of 
tenderness and affection, the colored young children 
have never been surpassed m my experience. Might I 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 33 

choose a class of my fellow-creatures to instruct and 
love, I should be drawn by my present affection toward 
them to none more readily than to these children of the 
slaves ; nor should I expect my patience and affection to 
be more richly rewarded elsewhere. Extremes of dis- 
position and character, of course, exist among them, as 
among others ; but they are naturally as bright, affection- 
ate, and capable as other children, while the ways in 
which your instructions impress them, the reasonings 
they excite, the remarks occasioned by them, are cer- 
tainly peculiar. 

Their attachments and sympathies are sometimes 
very touching. One little face I shall never forget, of 
a girl about seven years old, who passed us in the street 
on an errand, with such a peculiarly distressed yet 
gentle look, that I inquired her name. A lady with 
me said that she belonged to a white family, in which a 
son had recently killed a companion in a quarrel, and 
had fled. The natural anguish of a sister at some dire- 
ful calamity in a house could not have been more strik- 
ingly portrayed than in that sweet Httle dark face. It 
had evidently settled there. 

Going to meeting one Sabbath morning, a child, about 
eight years old, tripped along before me, with her hymn 
book and nicely-folded handkerchief in her hand, the 
flounces on her white dress very profuse, frilled ankles, 
light-colored boots, mohair mits, and sunshade, all show- 
ing that some fond heart and hand had bestowed great 
care upon her. Home and childi-en came to mind. I 
thought of the feelings which that flower of the family 
perhaps occasioned. Is it the pastor's daughter ? Is it 
the daughter of the lady whose garden I had walked in, 
but which bears no such plant as this ? But my musings 



34 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

were interrupted by the cliild, wlio, on hearing foot- 
steps behind, suddenly turned, and showed one of the 
blackest faces I ever saw. It was one of the thousands 
of intelligent, happy colored children, who on every 
Sabbath, in every southern town and city, make a 
northern visitor feel that some of his theoretical opin- 
ions at home, with regard to the actual condition of 
slavery, are much improved by practical views of it. 

Section IV. — Lahor and Privileges. 

Life on the cotton plantations is, in general, as severe 
with the colored people as agricultural life at the north. 
I have spent summers upon farms, however, where the 
owners and their hands excited my sympathy by toils 
to which the slaves on many plantations are strangers. 
Every thing depends upon the disposition of the master. 
It happened that I saw some of the best specimens, and 
heard descrij)tions of some of the very bad. In the rice 
swamps, malaria begets diseases and destroys life ; in the 
sugar districts, at certain seasons, the process of manu- 
facture requires labor, night and day, for a considerable 
time. There the dilFerent dispositions of the master 
affect the comfort of the laborers variously, as in all 
other situations. 

But in the cotton-growing country, the labor, though 
extending in one form and another nearly through the 
year, yet taking each day's labor by itself, is no more 
toilsome than is performed by a hired field hand at the 
north ; still the continuity of labor from February to 
the last part of December, with a slight intermission in 
midsummer, when the crop is " laid by," the stalks being 
matured, and the crop left to ripen, makes plantation 
life severe. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OP SLAVERY. 35 

Some planters allow their hands a certain portion of 
the soil for their own culture, and give them stated times 
to work it ; some prefer to allow them out of the whole 
crop a percentage equal to such a distribution of land ; 
and some do nothing of the kind ; but their hearts are 
made of the northern iron and the steel. It is the com- 
mon law, however, with all who regard public opinion 
at the south, to allow their hands certain privileges and 
exemptions, such as long rest in the middle of the day, 
early dismission from the field at night, a half day occa- 
sionally, in addition to holidays, for which the colored 
people of all denominations are much indebted to the 
Episcopal church, whose festivals they celebrate with 
the largest liberty. 

They raise poultry, swine, melons ; keep bees ; catch 
fish ; peddle brooms, and small articles of cabinet mak- 
ing ; and, if they please, lay up the money, or spend it 
on their wives and children, or waste it for things hurt- 
ful, if there are white traders desperate enough to defy 
the laws made for such cases, and which are apt to be 
most rigorously executed. Some slaves are owners of 
bank and railroad shares. A slave woman, having had 
three hundred dollars stolen from her by a white man, 
her master was questioned in court as to the probability 
of her having had so much money. He said that he not 
unfrequently had borrowed fifty and a hundred dollars 
of her, and added, that she was always very strict as to 
his promised time of payment. 

It is but fair, in this and all other cases, to describe 
the condition of things as commonly approved and pre- 
vailing ; and when there are painful exceptions, it is but 
just to consider what is the public sentiment with regard 
to them. By this rule a visitor is made to feel that 



do A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

good and kind treatment of tlie slaves is the common 
law, subject, of course, to caprices and passions. One 
will find at the south a high tone of feeling on this sub- 
ject, and meet -with some affecting illustrations of it. 

You may see a wagon from a neighboring town in the 
market-j^lace of a city or large place, filled with honey- 
combs, melons, mops, husk mats, and other articles of 
manufacture and produce, and a white man with his 
colored servant selling them at wholesale or retail. It 
wall interest your feelings, and give you some new im- 
pressions of slave owners, to know that these articles 
are the property of that servant, and that his master, a 
respectable gentleman, with disinterested kindness, is 
helping his servant dispose of them, protecting him from 
imposition, making change for him, with the glow of 
cheerfulness and good humor such as acts like these 
impart to the looks and manner of a real gentleman, 
who always knows how to sustain himself in an equivo- 
cal position. 

Had that master overworked his servant in the sugar 
season, or killed him in the field, we might have heard 
of it at the north ; but this little wagon has come and 
gone for more than a year on the market days, the 
master and servant chatting side by side, counting their 
net profits, discussing the state of the markets, inventing 
new commodities, the master stepping in at the Savings 
Bank, on the way home, and entering nine or ten dollars 
more in Joe's pass-book, which already shows several 
hundred dollars ; and all this has not been so much as 
named on the platform of any society devoted to the 
welfare of the slaves. True, there are masters, who, 
as the psalm sung by the colored choir says, "never 
raise their thoughts so high;" but it is gratifjdng to 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 37 

know that such things as these characterize the inter- 
course of masters and servants at the south. Nameless 
are they, in a thousand cases, and noiseless ; but the 
consciousness of them, and of the disposition and feel- 
ings which prompt them, it was easy to see, gives to 
our wholesale denunciations of slavery a character of 
injustice which grieves and exasperates not a little. 

Probably every northerner feels, on seeing the negro 
cabins, that he could make them apparently more com- 
fortable on almost every plantation. The negroes them- 
selves could do so, if they chose, in very many cases ; 
but the cabins will strike every one disagreeably at 
first. We err in comparing them with dwellings suited 
to people of different habits and choice from those of the 
colored population at the south. A log cabin, plastered 
with mud, whether at the south or west, seems to a 
stranger a mean, pitiable place. I was, however, 
amused with a man in the cars, whom I overheard com- 
plaining that in building a house for his own family, in 
a new settlement, he was obliged to build with joists 
and boards, as logs were not to be had. The log cabin 
is cool in summer and warm in winter. An estimable 
man, who had been a physician and became a planter, 
built brick cabins for his people. They grew sick in 
them, and he was obliged to erect log cabins. A great 
fire, and at the same time thorough ventilation, are 
essential to their comfort and health. Both of these 
are obtained together in the cabins better than in framed 
or brick dwellino-s. 



38 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



Section V. — Personal Protection, 

A strong public sentiment protects the person of 
the slave against annoyances and injuries. Boys and 
men cannot abuse another man's servant. Wrongs to 
his person are avenged. It amounts in many cases to 
a chivalric feeling, increased by a sense of utter mean- 
ness and cowardice in striking or insulting one who can- 
not return insult for insult and blow for blow. Instances 
of this protective feeling greatly interested me. One 
was rather singular, indeed ludicrous, and made consid- 
erable sport ; but it shows how far the feeling can pro- 
ceed. A slave was brought before a mayor's court for 
some altercation in the street ; the master privately re- 
quested the mayor to spare him from being chastised, 
and the mayor was strongly disposed to do so ; but the 
testimony was too palpably against the servant, and he 
was whipped ; in consequence of which the master sent 
a challenge to the mayor to fight a duel. 

A gentleman, whose slave had been struck by a white 
mechanic with whom the servant had remonstrated for 
not having kept an engagement, went indignantly to the 
shop with his man servant to seek explanation and re- 
dress, and in avenging him, had his arm stripped of his 
clothing by a drawing knife in the hands of the meclianic. 

It is sometimes asserted that the killing a negro is 
considered a comparatively light ofience at the south. 
In Georgia it is much safer to kill a white man than a 
negro ; and if either is done in South Carolina, the law 
is exceedingly apt to be put in force. In Georgia I 
have witnessed a strong purpose among lawyers to pre- 
vent the murderer of a negro from escaping justice. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 39 

There can be no doubt that this disposition is on the 
increase. I was in Columbia, South CaroUna, when the 
Law Court of Appeals pronounced sentence of death 
on two young white men for the murder of a negro 
who had driven them from his garden. Murderers of a 
white man surely could not have been addressed other- 
wise than thus by the judge. 

" You must remember with painful emotions the bloody 
tragedy of that peaceful Sabbath morning in which you 
were the principal actors. 

'•' With a deadly weapon in your hand, and a fatal pur- 
pose in your hearts, you went to Shadrack Johnson's hum- 
ble dwelling, and in the presence of his imploring wife 
and weeping children, committed the foul murder which 
your wicked hearts had conceived. 

" It was in vain that you relied upon the evidence of 
your companions to excuse or to extenuate your offence. 
Previous threats, the preparation of a deadly weapon, the 
intention to commit a trespass upon his property, and the 
execution of your fatal purpose, authorized the jury to say 
that you are guilty. 

" VVe are prepared to see levity and indiscretion in youth ; 
but great crimes like this are generally the result of evil 
passions long indulged, and of temptations unresisted. 

'■ If in the morning of life you have become habitually 
reckless by frequent transgression, you must have lived 
without that moral training which impresses virtuous les- 
sons on the youthful heart : without that religious instruc- 
tion which teaches God's commandment, ' Thou shalt do 
no murder,' and that if you keep not this law, you shall 
surely die. 

'• You may flatter yourselves with the hope of a pardon. 
I am not authorized to say how far the governor may be 
induced 'to temper justice with mercy; ' but if this last 
hope shall fail you, you will be left to ' a fate more fearful 
than the death of the body.' For such an event, and for 
such a fate, I would admonish you to prepare." 

Not long since, two men were convicted of worrying 
a negro with dogs, and killing him. They were con- 
fined in Charleston jail. The people of their own dis- 



40 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

trict meditated n rescue 
changing the ordinary course of proceeding in such 
cases, conveyed them, under military guard, to the dis- 
trict where the murder was committed, and they were 
executed in sight of their neighbors. 

There have been mournful cases in which the mur- 
derer of a negro has escaped deserved punishment ; but 
it was not because it was a negro that was killed. The 
murderers of white peoj^le have as frequently obtained 
impunity. The arguments of lawyers at the bar have 
been quoted to show that the life of a negro at the south 
is not equivalent to the hfe of a white person ; even if 
this be correct, we forget that lawyers, in changing sides, 
sometimes change their minds, and are unwilling to have 
their previous views quoted as authority. 

The laws allow the master great extent in chastising 
a slave, as a protection to himself and to secure subor- 
dination. Here room is given for brutal acts ; barba- 
rous modes of inflicting pain, resulting in death, are 
employed ; but it is increasingly the case that vengeance 
overtakes and punishes such transgressors. 

It is well for themselves that the blacks do not have 
the temptations which the liberty of testifying against 
the whites would give them. While they are thus re- 
stricted by law, for obvious reasons, from giving testi- 
mony, their evidence has its just weight with juries, wheu 
it is known. Offenders do not escape more frequently at 
the south, by legal quibbles, imperfect legislation, and 
the ingenuity of lawyers than in the free States. The 
whole impression with regard to personal protection ex- 
tended over the slaves, as compared with personal safety 
elsewhere, was far different from that which I had been 
led to expect. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 41 



Section VL — Prevention of Crime. 

Prevention of crime among the lower class of society 
is one striking feature of slavery. Day and night every 
one of them is amenable to a master. If ill disposed, 
he has his own policeman in his owner. Thus three 
millions of the laboring class of our population are in a 
condition most favorable to preservation from crimes 
against society. But the petty larcenies which swell our 
pubhc records of crime are, many of them, at the south 
privately punished, and do not enter into the public 
enumerations of offences. 

A prosecuting officer, who had six or eight counties 
in his district, told me that during eight years of ser- 
vice, he had made out about two thousand bills of 
indictment, of which not more than twelve were against 
colored people. It must follow of necessity that a large 
amount of crime is prevented by the personal relation 
of the colored man to a white citizen. It would be a 
benefit to some of our immigrants at the north, and to 
society, if government could thus prevent or reach dis- 
turbances of the peace through masters, overseers, or 
guardians. But we cannot rival in our police measures 
the beneficial system of the south in its distributive 
agendes to prevent burglaries and arson. 

A physician, relating his experience in his rides at 
night, said that in solitary places, the sudden apj^earance 
of a white man generally excited some apprehension with 
regard to personal safety, but the sight of a black man 
was always cheering, and made him feel safe. Husbands 
and fathei*s feel secure on leaving home for several days, 
even where their houses are surrounded by negro cabins 



42 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

and the dwellings of tlie whites are much scattered. The 
reading of this would awaken a smile in many a south- 
erner, for it is far below the truth. 

On reaching the Great Pedee River near midnight, 
on the way to Wilmington, North Carolina, the passen- 
gers leave the cars and go down into a rude scow or 
raft, to be pulled over the stream. It is a dismal place. 
Small piles of the pitch pine light wood are burning 
here and there in place of lamps or moonlight ; negroes 
stand within twelve or fifteen feet of each other, hold- 
ing aloft a blazing knot, the reflection of the blaze on 
their dark skins giving them a fiery-red look ; while 
twenty or thirty of them are seen each with baggage 
on his shoulders, transferring it to the boat. It seems 
just the place for some fearful catastrophe. The loco- 
motive is far above you on piles, looking over like a 
frightened horse into the gulf; the yellow water is in 
the swamps on either hand, with its brood of amphibious 
creatures ; you strike your cane, or foot, against a log, 
and pieces of phosphorescent wood fly about; all is 
stagnant and deathlike ; you are at your wits' end as 
to any way of escape from the doleful place without 
help. The few white male passengers, with a large 
number of women and children, Avould be very much at 
the mercy of those brawny slaves, should they be dis- 
posed to assert their power ; but the patient looks of the 
negroes, the silent manner in which they perform their 
work, the care which they take in properly disposing 
the smaller pieces of baggage so as not to be crushed 
by trunks, and their whole appearance of cheerfulness, 
awaken feelings of affection and gratitude instead of 
alarm or thoughts of danger. There is something in 
the apparent meekness of slaves in their work at such 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 43 

times that makes one love tliem greatly and feel an in- 
tense desire to protect them from imperious, unfeeling 
words and treatment. Their natural i^assions and pro- 
pensities sometimes get the mastery over them, because 
they are men ; but they are not predisposed to violence 
and insubordination. 



44 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER V. 

FAVORABLE APPEARANCES IX SOUTHERN SOCIETY 
AND IN SLAVERY— Continued. 

Section VII. — Absence of Mobs. 

One consequence of the disposal of the colored people 
as to individual control is, the absence of mobs. That 
fearful element in society, an irresponsible and low class, 
is not found at the south. Street brawls and conflicts 
between two races of laboring people, or the ignorant 
and more excitable portions of different religious denom- 
inations, are mostly unknown within the bounds of 
slavery. Our great source of disturbance at the north, 
jealousy and collisions between Protestant and Irish 
Roman Catholic laborers, is obviated there. 

When the remains of Mr. Calhoun were brought to 
Charleston, a gentleman from a free State in the proces- 
sion said to a southern gentleman, " Where is your un- 
derswell ? " referring to the motley crowed of men and 
boys of all nations which gather in most of our large 
places on public occasions. He was surprised to learn 
that those respectable, well-dressed, well-behaved colored 
men and boys on the sidewalks were a substitute for that 
class of population which he had elsewhere been accus- 
tomed to see with repugnant feelings on public occa- 
sions. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 45 



Section VIII. — Personal Liberty. 

The personal liberty of tlie slaves is in contrast with 
the notions which many hold. To trust them far out 
of sight, many suppose, is unsafe and very unusual. This 
is soon corrected on seeing such instances as these which 
came to my knowledge, and which are not remarkable. 

A gentleman sent a slave with a horse and buggy to 
the plantation of a relative a hundred and ten miles 
distant, to get some of the herb boneset for an invalid 
daughter under medical treatment. Ralph was a culler 
of simples, remembered where the herb grew, and was 
sure that none could be found short of that plantation. 
He returned in due time with " a smart heap of it." 

I saw a slave who had been sent seven hundred miles, 
to Washington, D. C, with his master's span of horses 
and carriage, and a considerable amount of gold. This 
man was once abducted, with others, at Washington, in a 
well-known case, but vohmtarily returned, with the loss 
of his watch and money, to his master. The feeling of 
masters is, that they will not keep a servant who is not 
willing to remain with them. They are suffered to find 
other masters. If on fleeing they are pursued, it is to 
recover them as property ; but they are almost invaria- 
bly disposed of. 



Section IX. — Absence of popular Delusions. 

There is another striking peculiarity of southern so- 
ciety which is attributable to slavery, and is very inter- 
esting to a northerner at the present day. While the 
colored people are superstitious and excitable, popular 



46 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

delusions and fanaticisms do not prevail among tliem. 
That class of society among us in which these things 
get root has a substitute in the colored population. 
Spiritual rappings, biology, second-adventism, Mormon- 
ism, and the whole spawn of errors which infest us, do 
not find subjects at the south. There is far more faith in 
the south, taken as a whole, than with us. Many things 
which we feel called to preach against here are con- 
fined to the boundaries of the free States ; yet the 
white population are readers of books, though not of 
newspapers, perhaps more generally than we. That 
vast amount of active but uninstructed mind with us 
which seizes every new thing, and follows brilliant or 
specious error, and erects a folly into a doctrine with a 
sect annexed, and so infuses doubt or contempt of things 
sacred into many minds, is no element in southern life. 
This is one reason why there is more faith, less infidelity, 
at the south, than at the north. The opinions of a lower 
class on moral and religious subjects have a powerful 
effect on the classes above them more than is generally 
acknowledged ; and hence we derive an argument in fa- 
vor of general education, in which moral and religious 
principles shall have their important place. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 47 



CHAPTER YI. 

FAVORABLE APPEARANCES IN SOUTHERN SOCIETY 
AND IN SLAVERY — CoxTixrED. 

Section X. — Absence of Pauperism. 

Pauperism is prevented by slavery. This idea is 
absurd, no doubt, in the apprehension of many at the 
north, who think that slaves are, as a matter of course, 
paupers. Nothing can be more untrue. 

Every slave has an inalienable claim in law upon his 
owner for support for the whole of life. He can not be 
thrust into an almshouse, he can not become a vagrant, 
he can not beg his living, he can not be wholly neglected 
when he is old and decrepit. 

I saw a white-headed negro at the door of his cabin 
on a gentleman's estate, who had done no work for ten 
years. He enjoys all the privileges of the plantation, 
garden, and orchard ; is clothed and fed as carefully as 
though he were useful. On asking him his age, he said 
he thought he " must be nigh a hundred ; " that he was 
a servant to a gentleman in the army " Avhen Washing- 
ton fit Cornw^allis and took him at Little York." 

At a place called Harris's Neck, Georgia, there is a ser- 
vant who has been confined to his bed with rheumatism 
tliirty years, and no invalid has more reason to be grate- 
ful for attention and kindness. 
4 



48 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

Going into the office of a physician and surgeon, I 
accidentally saw the leg of a black man which had just 
been amputated for an ulcer. The patient will be a 
charge ujDon his owner for life. An action at law may 
be brought against one who does not provide a comfort- 
able support for his servants. 

Thus the pauper establishments of the free States, the 
l)urden and care of immigrants, are almost entirel}' obvi- 
ated at the south by the colored population. While we 
bow in submission to the duty of governing or maintain- 
ing certain foreigners, we can not any of us conceal that 
we have natural preferences and tastes as to the ways of 
doing good. In laboring for the present and future wel- 
fare of immigrants, we are subjected to evils of which 
^ve are ashamed to complain, but from which the south 
is enviably free. To have a neighborhood of a certain 
description of foreigners about your dwellings; to see a 
horde of them get possession of a respectable dwelling 
in a court, and thus force the residents, as they always 
•do, to flee, it being impossible to live with comfort in 
■close connection with them; to have all the senses as- 
sailed from their opened doors ; to have your Sabbath ut- 
terly destroyed, — is not so agreeable as the presence of a 
respectable colored population, every individual of which 
is under the responsible oversight of a master or mis- 
tress, who restrains and governs him, and has a repu- 
tation to maintain in his respectable appearance and 
comfort, and keeps him from being a burden on the 
community. 

I thought of our eleven thousand paupers who have 
been received at Deer Island, in Boston harbor, during 
the short time that it has been appropriated to that pur- 
pose, and of our large State workhouses, which we so 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 49 

patiently build for the dregs of the foreign population. 
This paragraph from the Boston Post is in place here : — 

House of Correction. — There were yesterday six 
hundred and fifty-four prisoners in the House of Correc- 
tion, with the promise of an addition of thirty more before 
to-morrow. The accommodations are so limited that about 
one hundred of them are compelled to sleep in one of 
the workshops, and it is the intention of the master to 
place a part of them in the chapel. So many are there, 
that it is ditiicult to find any thing for a large portion of 
them to do : and sometimes from eighty to one hundred are 
idle. When a call is made upon any of the idle ones to 
do any work out doors, they jump with great alacrity to 
perform it, being delighted to have an opportunity to 
breathe the fresh air. 



The south is saved from much of this by her colored 
laboring class. We may say that we prefer even this to 
slavery without it. They may reply as one of the Sacs 
and Fox Indians said in his speech at our State-House 
several years ago to the governor, alluding to our pen- 
insula: "We are glad you have got this island, and 
hope you are contented with it." 

The following case, that came to my knowledge, offers 
a good illustration of the views which many slaves take 
of their dependent condition. A colored woman with 
her children lived in a separate cabin belonging to her 
master, washing clothes for families in that place. She 
paid her master a percentage of her earnings, and had 
laid up more than enough to buy her freedom and that 
of her children. Why, as she might be made free, does 
she not use it rather ? 

She says that if she were to buy her freedom, she would 
have no one to take care of her for the rest of her life. 
Now her master is responsible for her support. She 



50 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

has no care about the future. Old age, sickness, poverty, 
do not trouble her. " I can indulge myself and chil- 
dren," she says, " in things which otherwise I could not 
get. If we want new things faster than mistress gets 
them for us, I can spare money to get them. If I buy my 
freedom, I cut myself off from the interests of the white 
follcs in me. Now they feel that I belong to them, and 
peoj^le will look to see if they treat me well." Her only 
trouble is, that her master may die before her ; then she 
will " have to be free." 



Section XL — Wciffes of Labor. 

One error which I had to correct in my own opinions 
was with regard to wages of labor. I Avill illustrate my 
meaning by relating a case. 

A young colored woman is called into a family at the 
south to do work as a seamstress. Her charge is, per- 
haps, thirty-seven and a half cents per day. 

" Do you have your wages for your own use ? " "No ; 
I pay mistress half of what I earn." 

Seamstresses in our part of the country, toiling all 
day, you will naturally think, are not compelled to give 
one half of their earnings to an owner. This may be 
your first reflection, accompanied with a feehng of com- 
passion for the poor girl, and with some thoughts, not 
agreeable, concerning mistresses who take from a child of 
toil half her day's earnings. You will put this down as 
one of the accusations to be justly made against slavery. 

But, on reflecting further, you may happen to ask 
yourself, How much does it cost this seamstress for 
room rent, board, and clothing ? The answer will be, 
nothing. "Who provides her with these ? Her mistress. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 51 

Perhaps, now, your sympatliy may be arrested, and may 
begin to turn in favor of the mistress. The girl does 
not earn enough to pay her expenses, yet she has a full 
support, and lays up money. 

Could we make such provision for the army of seam- 
stresses who work for the shops in New York and other 
large places, making shirts at six or eight cents each, 
and paying rent and board out of this, we should feel that 
one heavy burden was lifted from our hearts ; and cer- 
tainly it would be from theirs. I compared the condi- 
tion of those colored seamstresses with that of the 
seamstresses of London so often described and sung. 
Thomas Hood has caused this inscription to be placed 
on his monument : " He sung the Song of the Shirt." 
Had he never seen any seamstresses but those who are 
American slaves, he would not have had occasion to 
write that song. 

The accusation against slavery of working human 
beings without w^ages must be modified, if we give a 
proper meaning to the term wages. A stipulated sum per 
diem is our common notion of wages. A vast many slaves 
get wages in a better form than this — in provision for 
their support for the whole of life, with permission to 
earn something, and more or less according to the dis- 
position of the masters and the ability of the slaves. A 
statement of the case, which perhaps is not of much 
value, was made by a slaveholder in this form : You 
hire a domestic by the week, or a laborer by the month, 
for certain wages, with food, lodging, perhaps clothing ; 
I hire him for the term of life, becoming responsible for 
him in his decrepitude and old age. Leaving out of 
view the involuntariness on his part of the arrangement, 
he gets a good equivalent for his services ; to his risk 



52 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

of being sold, and passing from hand to hand, there is an 
offset m the perpetual claim which he will have on some 
owner for maintenance all his days. Whether some of 
our immigrants would not be willing to enter into such 
a contract, is a question which many opponents of sla- 
very at the north would not hesitate to answer for them, 
saying that liberty to beg and to starve is better than to 
have all your present wants su^Dplied, and a competency 
for life guarantied, in slavery. Not to discuss the ques- 
tion of the comparative value of liberty in cases in which 
all good is abstracted, and of slavery when furnished 
with the comforts of life, it may not be amiss to remind 
ourselves that the following description from the New 
York Journal of Commerce cannot be verified within 
the bounds of the slave States : — 

The Miseries of New York. — A number of hotels 
and restaurants make a practice of distributing the frag- 
ments of food collected from the tables, to the poor, at 
regular hours, every afternoon. By observing how this is 
done, any curious person can readily obtain some insight 
into the miseries of the city. By the same process, a par- 
tial cue may be had to the so called " mysteries of New 
York," which have always afforded a prolific theme for 
scribblers. The place where these bounties are to be dis- 
pensed is indicated some time in advance by the throng 
of wretched-looking people who eagerly crowd around, 
with baskets, aprons, &c., in which to bear away the ex- 
pected gifts. The bloated inebriate, tottering creatures 
enfeebled by disease, as well as many young girls, acting 
as agents for others who remain in their own garrets and 
cellars, — all are represented. On the first appearance 
of the provisions, which form a complete chowder of bread, 
meats, pastry, lobster, fish, and vegetables, a general rush 
is made, which has often to be forcibly repelled. With a 
large scoop, broken plate, or something of the kind, a 
quantity of the mixture is thrown into each vessel or other 
receptacloj extended to receive it, with all possible rapidi- 
ty, — the crowd meanwhile pressing closer and closer, 
until again forced into the background. Every device is 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 53 

resorted to in order to secure a double portion. A common 
trick is, to have a basket placed one side, into which each 
fresh instalment is deposited, until no more can be pro- 
cured. Another will have a capacious apron or bag sus- 
pended from the waist, secure from observation, while the 
contents of the extended basket or dish are slyly thrust into 
it unnoticed. Some, in this manner, obtain the lion's 
share, while the weak, sick, or decrepit are turned off 
empty. The scene would bear to be transferred to canvas 
with an artist's pencil. 



Section XII. — Religious Instruction. 

AVlien religious instruction, the pure, simple gospel of 
Jesus Christ, is extended to our laboring classes gener- 
ally, adults and children, as fully as it is enjoyed by the 
slaves in such parts of the south as I visited, an object 
will be gained of far more intrinsic importance to our na- 
tional j)i'Osperity than all questions relating to slavery. 

Probably, in very many places at the south, a larger 
proportion of the slaves than of the whites have given 
evidence of being the children of God. The religious 
condition of the slaves surprises every visitor. The 
number of communicants among them, in proportion to 
the whites, is frequently astonishing ; for example, in cases 
known to me, one hundred and fifty blacks to fifty whites, 
two hundred to twenty, four hundred to one hundred. 

In Virginia, the whole number of communicants in the 
Baptist churches is stated to me, by a Baptist pastor, to 
be forty-five thousand blacks and fifty thousand whites. 

In Savannah, Georgia, in a population of several thou- 
sand blacks, more than one third are church members. 
Three colored pastors, with salaries from eight hundred 
to a thousand dollars, are supported by subscriptions and 
pew rents among their own members. More than one 



'54 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

third of tlie wliole number of communicants reported 
by the synod of South Carolina are colored people. Of 
the three hundred and eighty-four thousand in that State, 
one seventh, or more than fifty thousand, are professors 
of religion. In 1853, fifteen thousand dollars were con- 
tributed by five thousand slaves, in Charleston, to benev- 
olent objects. These statistics, which are a fair sample, 
imight easily be multiplied, but it is unnecessary. Rehgion 
/has gained wonderful ascendency among this people. 
\ I went to their prayer meetings. One of them wiQ 
represent the rest. They met in the choir-part of the 
gallery, in the evening, once a week. A white brother 
presided, as the law requires, and read a portion of 
Scripture ; but the slaves conducted the meeting. They 
came in with their every-day dresses, and each, as he 
entered, prostrated himself in prayer. One of them 
stood up before the desk, and repeated a hymn, two 
lines at a time. At the singing of the last stanza in 
each hymn, they all rose ; and they invariably repeated 
the last two lines of a hymn. They j^rayed without 
being called upon. Such prayers I never heard. There 
was nothing during the week that I anticipated with so 
much pleasure as the return of that prayer meeting. 
Earnestness in manner, overflowing love to God, com- 
passion for their fellow-men every where, gratitude un- 
bounded to Christ for his great love wherewith he loved 
them, a deep and touching sense of unworthiness, supplica- 
tions for mercy and for grace to keep them from sin, all 
expressed in original, but frequently ungrammatical, yet 
sometimes beautiful and affecting terms, characterized all 
their prayers. " O Lord, we prostrate ourselves before 
thee on the sinful hands and knees of our poor miserable 
bodies and souls." " O Lord, may our hearts all be sot 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 55 

right to-night ; may thy blessed Spirit shine away all 
our doubts and fears." It was touching to hear one man 
say, " Bless our dear masters and brothers, who come 
here to read the Bible to us, and pay so much attention 
to us, though we ain't that sort of people as can onter- 
pert thy word in all its colors and forms." " my 
heavenly Father," said an old man, "I am thy dear 
child. I know I love thee. Thou art my God, my 
portion, and nothing else. my Father, I have no 
home in this world ; my home is very far off. I long 
to see it. Jesus is there ; thou art there ; angels, good 
men are there. I am coming home. I am one day 
nearer to it." 

The hymns being given out from memory, I was 
much affected in noticing the description of hymns which 
had been learned. Those by Watts, expressing native 
depravity and need of regenerating grace, seemed to be 
favorites, such, for example, as the versifications of the 
fifty-first psalm : " Show pity. Lord, O Lord, forgive," 
and, " How sad our state by nature is ! " 

I cannot soon forget the looks of one leader, and the 
impression he and the hymn made upon me. When he 
repeated two lines at a time, all the meeting joined in 
singing that hymn — '' How oft have sin and Satan strove 
To rend my soul from thee my God," Sec. No one ever 
seemed to feel the last verse of that hymn more than 
they — " The gospel bears my spirit up," &;c. 

I never perceived in their prayers any thing that re- 
minded me of their condition as slaves. They made no 
allusions to sorrovv's but those which are spiritual, and 
they chiefly dwelt upon their temptations. But the love 
of Christ and heaven were the all-inspiring themes of 
their prayers and hymns. The pastor of a large colored 



56 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

church, containing many free blacks, told me that he 
was never reminded by their respective prayers of their 
respective conditions, as bond or free. 

One man prayed with a voice which I never heard 
surpassed for strength. He had no control over it, so 
that, when emotions set in with sudden power, they 
would force it to an amazing pitch, though the sentiment 
did not always warrant the proportion of stress. I have 
no question that portions of his prayer could have been 
heard distinctly across the Connecticut River in any part 
of its course in a still night. Withal it was musical, and 
wholly inoffensive. 

During the Sabbath, in addition to their opportuni- 
ties of worship with the whites, a sermon is generally 
preached to them separately, though the white people 
are not excluded. The colored men are called upon to 
offer prayers. The gospel which is preached to them, 
so far as I heard it, is the same gospel which is preached 
to us. The only difference between them and us, as to 
rehgious instruction, is, they cannot generally read. The 
white children teach many of them, and the colored 
children are frequently able to read the Bible. The 
colored choirs are, of course, able to read. 

The laws forbidding their being publicly taught to 
read are retained in order to be used against those who 
teach them from motives of interference. But these 
laws, so far as they restrict the liberty of the citizens in 
giving instruction, are privately disregarded. A south- 
ern member of Congress told me that, in his State, they 
were generally a dead letter, and that they would be 
abolished, except that this would expose the people to 
improper intrusions of teachers and books. In his own 
case, for example, he was obliged to have men servants 



A SOUTH-SIDE YIETT OF SLAYERY. 57 

that could read, if for no other reason, that they might 
know the titles of books, superscriptions of letters, and 
other things, in performing errands or receiYing written 
orders. 

Their acquaintance with the word of God is, to a great 
extent, through oral instruction ; yet in all that constitutes 
Christian excellence, and that knowledge of God which 
comes directly from him, they liaYC no superiors. A 
man Avho has spent a whole hfe in literary pursuits, and 
in studying and preaching God's word, listens to those 
slaYCS with their comparatively limited acquaintance with 
the Bible, and feels humble to think that faith and good- 
ness in himself should bear no greater proportion to his 
knowledge. It is an encouragement to all missionaries 
among the heathen not to make literature or theoretical 
instruction even in religion take precedence of simple 
preaching ; there is a knowledge of God imparted to the 
heart that loves him which flir surpasses the instruction 
of man's wisdom. 

These slaves are a rebuke to certain members of 
churches, men of cultivated minds, literary taste, or 
general refinement, who are so apt to decline when 
called upon in religious meetings to make remarks or 
lead in prayer. The very men who, in many respects, 
would be most acceptable and useful in these services, 
generally are made so sensitive by intellectual and social 
cultivation, that they add nothing to the spiritual inter- 
ests of a church. It is a sad contrast, a professor in a 
college, for example, sitting silent for years in the de- 
votional meetings of his church, and a poor slave, who 
cannot pray grammatically, so wrestling with God in 
prayer as to make one say of him, '• As a prince hast 
thou power with God and Y^th men." Sometimes the 



58 A SOUTH-SIDE YIEW OF SLAVERY. 

ordinary low responses of fellow-worshipers in tlie 
Methodist prayer meetings would be excited, by seraphic 
expressions in the prayer of a slave brother, to such a 
pitch as to raise involuntary shoutings from the whole 
meeting, in which I almost wished to joii;i, for the thoughts 
expressed were so awakening and elevating that, "or 
ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of 
Amminadib." 

Let us not fail to recognize this indisputable truth, 
that the restriction laid upon publicly teaching the 
slaves to read has stimulated Christain zeal and benev- 
olence, so that nowhere in our country are greater pains 
taken than at the south to instruct the lower classes. 
Love to the souls of men will find or make access to 
them. The negroes are made to commit passages of 
Scripture more generally than in our Sabbath schools ; 
pams are taken with them which under other circum- 
stances they would not receive. 

How frequently at the north, for example, can we 
find a scene like this? — a Christian master, surrounded 
every morning by fifty laborers in his employ hearing 
the Bible read, repeating passages which were given out 
the preceding day, singing, and praying, and then going 
forth to their labor. Such scenes do occur, and are 
becoming more frequent at the south. 

A lady of wealth and refinement at the south collects 
the mothers among her servants, and forms them into a 
maternal association, reads to them on the subject of 
education, and encourages them to talk freely with her 
and with each other on their duties to their children. 
This is only a specimen of the efforts of pious women at 
the south in behalf of the slaves. 

How wrong it is, in blaming the south for not giving 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 59 

the Bible to tlie slaves without restriction, to shut our 
eves against these things ! Let the tongue be palsied that 
will justify the shutting up of the book of God from a 
human being ; but virtually this is not done at the south. 
The negroes are as faithfully and thoroughly instructed 
in the word of God as any class of people. It is true 
of them, as the Catechism says, that " the Spirit of God 
maketh — especially the preaching of the word an effect- 
ual means of convicting and converting sinners, and 
of building them up in holiness and comfort through 
faith unto salvation." The time must come when every 
slave can read the Bible ; but if one declares that the 
withholding of it is fotal, it may be asked, How were men 
saved before the art of printing made copies of the Bible 
generally accessible ? Multitudes of our British ances- 
tors learned the way to heaven who never owned a copy 
of the Scriptures. Those words, unintelligible to many, 
in the title pages of Bibles, — " appointed to be read in 
churches," — show liovv^ the people in those days obtained 
their knowledge of the sacred oracles. The slaves are 
far better off than they. Large numbers of them can 
read, and are furnished with the Scriptures, and have as 
good facility in quoting Scripture in their prayers as 
Christians generally. 

All this is perfectly obvious to any one with a com- 
mon degree of fairness and candor ; but still the whole 
Bible committed to memory is not so available for 
spiritual comfort and profit as to have the book in your 
hand ; to have the attention arrested and fixed by the 
sight of a passage ; to look upon the words, and to search 
the Scriptures, rather than the memory. When the 
Book of books can be furnished — the New Testament 
for six cents, and the whole Bible for fifteen — it must 



60 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

be a peremptoiy reason indeed that will justify us in 
not bestowing it upon our fellow-men. But we sliall 
resume this topic in another connection. 

Of all the situations in which human beings can be 
placed favorable to the salvation of the soul, under faith- 
ful efforts on the part of teachers, it is difficult to conceive 
of one better suited to this end, and in fjict more suc- 
cessful than the relation of these slaves to their Christian 
masters. It seemed as though human influence went 
further tOAvard efiecting the reception of the gospel by 
the slaves than in any other cases. Suppose a family 
of them bound to their master by aifection and respect. 
Whatever he can make appear to their understandings 
and consciences to be right, he has as much power to 
enforce upon them as ever falls within the power of 
moral suasion. So it is, indeed, with pious mihtary and 
naval commanders, and their soldiers and sailors ; sub- 
ordination, attended with respect and love, opens the 
widest door for persuasion ; and if the numbers of pious 
slaves are an indication, it must be confessed that slave 
owners, as a body, have performed their Christian duties 
to their slaves to a degree which the masters of free 
apprentices and the employers of free laborers have as 
yet hardly equaled. 



We have thus far looked at the slaves apart from 
the theory of slavery and from slave laws, and from 
their liability to suffering by being separated and sold. 
These features of slavery deserve to be considered by 
themselves ; we can give them and things of that class a 
more just weight, and view the favorable circumstances 
of their condition with greater candor. This I have 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 61 

endeavored to do, describing every thing just as it struck 
me, leaving out of the question the evils of slavery, and 
abstract doctrines respecting it. 

It will not be forgotten that I am describing the ap- 
pearance of things in a portion of southern society under 
the highest cultivation. There is, then, a large part of 
the slaveholding community in which the appearance 
of the slaves makes agreeable impressions upon a 
stranger. 

Judging of them as you meet them in the streets, see 
them at work, or at church, or in their prayer meetings 
and singing meetings, or walking on the Sabbath or 
hohdays, one must see that they are a happy people, 
their physical condition superior to that of very many 
of our operatives, far superior to the common Irish 
people in our cities, and immeasurably above thousands 
in Great Britain. 

Were their condition practically all that many im- 
agine, one thing is certain, viz., insanity would pre- 
vail among them to an alarming extent. Corroding 
care, unmitigated sorrows, fear, and all the natural 
effects of physical suffering, would produce the same 
results of insanity with them as with corresponding 
classes among ourselves. It is well known that the cen- 
sus for 1840 was erroneous with regard to insanity and 
other diseases, as was ably shown by the American 
Statistical Association of Boston in a memorial to Con- 
gress. Making the largest allowances, it is still true that 
the comparative number of the insane among the slaves 
is exceedingly small. 

As responsibility, anxiety about the present and fu- 
ture, are the chief enemies to cheerfulness, and, among 
mental causes, to health, it is obvious that if one can 



62 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

have all his present wants supplied, with no care about 
short crops, the markets, notes payable, bills due, be re- 
lieved from the necessity of planning and contriving, all 
the hard thinking being done for him by another, while 
useful and honorable employment fills his thoughts and 
hands, he is so far in a situation favorable to great com- 
fort which will show itself in his w'hole outer man. 
Some will say, " This is the lowest kind of happiness." 
. Yet it is all that a large portion of the race seek for ; 
and few, except slaves, obtain it. Thus far I. am con- 
strained to say, that the relief w^hich my feelings have 
experienced in going to the south and seeing the slaves 
at home is very great. Whatever else may be true of 
their condition, to whatever perils or sorrows, from 
causes not yet spoken of, they may be subjected, I feel 
like one who has visited a friend who is sick and report- 
ed to be destitute and extremely miserable, but has found 
him comfortable and happy. The sickness is there, but 
the patient is not only comfortable, but happy, if the ordi- 
nary proofs of it are to be taken. We may wonder 
that he should be ; we may prove on paper that he can 
not be ; but if the colored people of Savannah, Colum- 
bia, and Richmond are not, as a whole, a happy people, 
I have never seen any. 

Much remains to be told. Cases illustrating the op- 
posite of almost every agreeable statement now made 
could also be multiplied ; still the things just described 
are as represented, and he is not in a healthful state of 
mind who cannot appreciate them. Our error has been 
in mixing the dark and bright parts of slavery together. 
This is wrong. We should never lose sight of dis- 
tinct moral qualities in character, as we do of different 
colors in mixing paint. Let us judge Slavery in this 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 63 

manner ; let us keep her different qualities distinct — 
abhor that in her which is evil, rejoice in that which is 
good. 

It so happened that my observations of things, and 
my reflections thus far, as well as those which follow, 
occurred very much in the order of my narrative. I 
had been at the south four or five weeks before any 
thing presented itself to my mind that excited painful 
feelings ; but at length it came. 
5 



64 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER VII. 

REVOLTING FEATURES OF SLAVERY. 

4-- Section I. — Slave Auctions, 

Passing up the steps of a court-house in a south- 
ern town with some gentlemen, I saw a man sitting on 
the steps with a colored infant, wrapped in a coverlet, 
its face visible, and the child asleep. 

It is difficult for some who have young children not to 
bestow a passing look or salutation upon a child ; but be- 
sides this, the sight before me seemed out of place and 
strange. 

" Is the child sick ? " I said to the man, as I was going 
up the steps. 

" No, master ; she is going to be sold." 

" Sold ! Where is her mother ? " 

" At home, master." 

"How old is the child?" 

" She is about a year, master." 

"You are not selling the child, of course. How 
comes she here ? " 

" I don't know, master ; only the sheriff told me to sit 
down here and wait till twelve o'clock, sir." 

It is hardly necessary to say that my heart died with- 
in me. Now I had found slavery in its most awful 
feature — the separation of a child from its mother. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIETV OF SLAVERY. 65 

" The mother is at home, master." What are her feel- 
ings ? What were they when she missed the infant ? 
Was it taken openly, or by stealth ? Who has done this ? 
What shape, what face had he ? The mother is not 
dead ; " the mother is at home, master." What did they 
do to you, Rachel, weeping and refusing to be com- 
forted ? 

Undetermined whether I would witness the sale, 
whether I could trust myself in such a scene, I walked 
into a friend's law office, and looked at his books. I 
heard the sheriff's voice, the "pubhc outcry," as the 
vendue is called, but did not go out, partly because I 
would not betray the feehngs which I knew would 
be awakened. 

One of my friends met me a few minutes after, who 
had witnessed the transaction. 

'" You did not see the sale," he said. 
" No. Was the child sold ? " 
" Yes, for one hundred and forty dollars." 
I could take this case, so far as I have described it, go 
into any pulpit or upon any platform at the north, and 
awaken the deepest emotions known to the human heart, 
harrow up the feelings of every father and mother, and 
make them pass a resolution surcharged with all the 
righteous indignation which language can express. All 
that any speaker who might have preceded me, sup- 
posing the meeting to be one for discussion, might have 
said respecting the contentment, good looks, happy re- 
lations of the slaves, I could have rendered of no avail 
to his argument by this little incident. Xo matter what 
kindness may be exercised in ten thousand instances ; a 
system in which the separation of an infant from its moth- 
er is an essential element can not escape reprobation. 



66 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

On relating what I had seen to some southern ladies, 
they became pale with emotion ; they were silent ; they 
were filled with evident distress. But before remark- 
ing upon this case, I will give another. My attention 
was arrested by the following advertisement : — 

" Guardian^s Sale. 
" Will be sold before the court-house door in , on 



the first Tuesday in May next, agreeably to an order of 

the ordinary of county, the interest of the minors 

of , in a certain negro girl named , said inter- 
est being three fourths of said negro." 

Three fourths of a nefjrro f^irl to be sold at auction ! 
There was something here which excited more than or- 
dinary curiosity : the application of vulgar fractions to 
personal identity was entirely new. I determined to 
witness this sale. 

An hour before the appointed time, I saw the girl 
sitting alone on the steps of the court-house. She wore 
a faded but tidy orange-colored dress, a simple hand- 
kerchief on her head, and she was barefoot. Her head 
was resting upon her hand, with her elbow on her knee. 
I stood unperceived and looked at her. Poor, lonely 
thing, waiting to be sold on the steps of that court-house ! 
The place of justice is a bleak promontory, from which 
you look off as upon a waste of waters — a dreary, shore- 
less waste. What avails every mitigation of slavery ? 
Had I become a convert to the system, here is enough 
to counterbalance all my good impressions. 

The sheriff arrived at noon, and the people assem- 
bled. The purchaser was to have the services of the 
girl three fourths of the time, a division of property 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 67 

having given some one a claim to one fourth of her 
appraised value. 

The girl was told to stand up. She had a tall, slen- 
der form, and was, in all respects, an uncommonly good- 
looking child. 

The biddmg commenced at two hundi-ed dollars, and 
went on in an animated and exciting manner. 

The girl began to cry, and wiped her tears with the 
back of her hand ; no one replied to her ; the bidding 
went on ; she turned her back to the people. I saw her 
shoulders heave with her suppressed crying ; she said 
something in a confused voice to a man who sat behind 
the auctioneer. 

When I was young I was drawn, by mingUng with 
some older schoolmates, strongly against my will, and 
every moment purposing an escape, to see a youth exe- 
cuted for arson. I resolved that I would never look 
upon such a sight again. But here I was beholding 
something which moved me as I had not been moved 
for all these long years. 

She was fourteen years old. A few days before I 
had sent to a child of mme, entering her fourteenth 
year, a birthday gift. By this coincidence I was led 
to ^think of this slave girl with some peculiar feelings. 
I made the case my own. She was a child to parents, 
living or dead, whose hearts, unless perverted by some 
unnatural process, would yearn over her and be dis- 
tracted by this sight. 

Four hundred and forty -five dollars was the last bid, 
and the man sitting behind the sheriff said to her kindly, 
" Well, run and jump into the wagon." 

A large number of citizens had assembled to witness 
the sale of this girl ; some of them men of education 



68 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

and refinement, humane and kind. On any question of 
delicacy and proi^riety, in every thing related to the 
finest sentiments, I would have felt it a privilege to learn 
of them. How then, I said to myself as I watched 
their faces, can you look upon a scene like this as upon 
an ordinary business transaction, when my feelings are 
so tumultuous, and all my sensibilities are excruciated? 
You are not hard-hearted men; you are gentle and 
generous. In my intercourse with you I have often felt, 
in the ardor of new friendships, how happy I should be 
to have you in my circle of immediate friends at home ; 
what ornaments you would be to any circle of Christian 
friends. Some of you are graduates of Yale College ; 
some of Brown University : you know all that I know 
about the human heart : I hesitate to believe that I am 
right and you wrong. If to sell a human being at auction 
were all which I feel it to be, you must know it as well 
as I. Yet I cannot yield my convictions. Why do we 
differ so in our feelings ? Instances of private humanity 
and tenderness have satisfied me that you would not lay 
one needless burden upon a human being, nor see him 
suffer without redress. Is it because you are used to 
the sight that you endure it with composure ? or be- 
cause it is an essential part of a system which you groan 
under but cannot remove ? 

To begin with the sale of the infant. During my 
stay in the place, three or four estimable gentlemen said 
to me, each in j)rivate, " I understand that you saw that 
infant sold the other day. We are very sorry that you 
happened to see it. Nothing of 'the kind ever took place 
before to our knowledge, and we all feared that it would 
make an unhappy impression upon you." 

The manner in which this was said affected me almost 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 69 

as much as the thing which had given occasion to it. 
Southern hearts and consciences, I felt reassured, were 
no more insensible than mine. The system had not 
steeled the feelings of these gentlemen ; the presence of 
a northerner, a friend, retaining his private, natural con- 
victions, as they perceived, without unkindness of words 
or manner, made them look at the transaction with his 
eyes ; every kind and generous emotion was alive in 
their hearts ; they felt that such a transaction needed 
to be explained and justified. 

How could they explain it ? How could they justify 
it ? "With many, if not with all of my readers, it is a 
foregone conclusion, as it had been with me, that the case 
admits of no explanation or justification. 

I received, as I said, three or four statements with 
regard to the case, and this is the substance of them: — 

The mother of this infant belonged to a man who had 
become embarrassed in his circumstances, in consequence 
of which the mother was sold to another family in the 
same place, before the birth of the child ; but the first 
owner still laid claim to the child, and there was some 
legal doubt with regard to liis claim. He was disposed 
to maintain this claim, and it became a question how the 
child should be taken from him. A legal gentleman, 
whose name is familiar to the country, told me that he 
was consulted, and he advised that through an old execu- 
tion the child should be levied upon, be sold at auction, 
and thus be removed from him. The plan succeeded. 
The child was attached, advertised, and offered for sale. 
The mother's master bought it, at more than double the 
ratable price, and the child went to its mother. 

Nor was this all. In the company of bidders there 
was a man employed by a generous lady to attend the 



70 A SOUTH-SIDE VIET7 OF SLAVERY. 

sale, and see that the infant was restored to its mother. 
The lady had heard that the sale was to take i^lace, but 
did not fully know the circumstances, and her jDurpose 
was to prevent the child from passing from the parent. 
Accordingly her agent and the agent of the mother's 
master were bidding against each other for some time, 
each with the same benevolent determination to restore 
the child to its mother. 

Rachel was comforted. Rather she had had no need 
of being comforted, for the sheriff was in this case to be 
her avenger and protector. Here was slavery restoring 
a child to its mother ; here was a system which can 
deal in unborn children, redressing its own wrong. 
Moreover, the law which forbids the sale of a child un- 
der five years was violated, in order to keep the child 
with its mother. The man who had the claim on the 
unborn child was from Connecticut. 

Had I not known the sequel of the story, what a 
thi'illing, effective appeal could I have made at the 
north by the help of this incident. Then what injustice 
I should have inflicted upon the people of that place ; 
what stimulus might I have given to the rescue of a fu- 
gitive slave ; what resuscitation to the collapsing vocab- 
ulary of epithets. How might I have helped on the dis- 
solution of the Union ; how have led half our tribes to 
swear that they would have war with the rest forever, 
when in truth the men and women who had done this 
thing had performed one of the most tender and humane 
actions, and did prevent, and, if necessary, with their 
earthly all, (for I knew them well,) would have prevented 
that from ever taking place to which, in my ignorance 
and passion, I should have sworn that I could bear wit- 
ness — an infant taken from its mother's breast and sold. 



A SOUTH-SIDE YIETV OF SLAVEKY. 71 

The " three fourths " of the girl were bought by the 
owner of the other fourth, who ah^eacly had possession 
of her. The sale took place tliat he might be her sole 
owner. That word which followed the sale, " Well, run 
and jump into the wagon," was music to the child. I 
understood afterward why she turned her back to the 
crowd, and looked at the man who sat behind the sheriff. 
He was her master, and he owned her mother ; the girl 
heard the bidding from the company, and heard her mas- 
ter bidding ; the conflict she understood ; she was at 
stake, as she felt, for life ; it took some time for the bid- 
ding to reach four hundred dollars ; hope deferred made 
her heart sick ; she turned and kept her eye on her 
master, to see whether he would suffer himself to be 
defeated. He sat quietly using his knife upon a stick, like 
one whose mind was made up ; the result of the sale in 
his favor excited no new feeling in him ; but the ready 
direction, "Well, run and jump into the wagon," was as 
much as to say, I have done what I meant to do when I 
came here. 

I did not see " Jacob," forty-five years of age, well 
recommended, who was advertised to be sold at the same 
time and place. The sheriff announced that the sale of 
Jacob was merely to perfect a title. There was only 
one bid, therefore — six hundred dollars ; the owner 
thus going thi'ough a form to settle some legal question. 

We are all ready to inquire as to the views and feel- 
ings of good men at the south with regard to the sale of 
slaves at auction. I felt great curiosity to know how 
some of the best of men regarded it. 

1. They say that very many of the slaves advertised 
with full descriptions, looking like invitations to buy, are 
merely legal appointments to determine claims, settle 



72 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

estates, without any purpose to let the persons offered 
for sale pass from the families to which they belong. 

It was some relief to know as much as this. At home 
and at the south advertisements in southern papers of 
negroes for sale at auction, describing them minutely, 
have often harrowed our feelings. The minute descrip- 
tion, they say, is, or may be, a legal defence in the way 
of proof and identification. 

2. However trying a public sale may be to the 
feelings of the slave, they say that it is for his interest 
that the sale should be public. 

The sale of slaves at auction in places where they are 
known — and this is the case every where except in the 
largest cities — excites deep interest in some of the citi- 
zens of that place. They are drawn to the sale with 
feelings of personal regard for the slaves, and are vigi- 
lant to prevent unprincipled persons from purchasing 
and carrying them away, and even from possessing them 
in their own neighborhood. I know of citizens com- 
bining to prevent such men from buying, and of their 
contributing to assist good men and women in purchas- 
ing the servants at prices greatly increased by such com- 
petition. In all such cases the law requiring and regu- 
lating public sales and advertisements of sales prevents 
those private transfers which would defeat the good in- 
tentions of benevolent men. It is an extremely rare 
case for a servant or servants who have been known m 
town to be removed into hands w^hich the people of the 
place generally would not approve. 

The sale of a negro at public auction is not a reckless, 
unfeeling thing in the towns at the south, where the 
subjects of the sale are from among themselves. In 
settling estates, good men exercise as much care with 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 73 

regard to the disposition of the slaves as though they 
were providing homes for white orphan children ; and 
that too when they have published advertisements of 
slaves in such connections with horses and cattle, that, 
w^hen they are read by a northerner, his feelings are 
excruciated. In hearing some of the best of men, such 
as are found in all communities, largely intrusted with 
the settlement of estates, men of extreme fairness and 
incorruptible integrity, speak of the word '' chattel" as 
applied to slaves, it is obvious that this unfeeling law 
term has no counterpart in their minds, nor in the feel- 
ings of the community in general. 

Slaves are allowed to find masters and mistresses who 
will buy them. Having found them, the sheriffs' and 
administrators' sales must by law be made public, the 
persons must be advertised, and every thing looks like 
an unrestricted offer, while it is the understanding of 
the company that the sale has really been made in 
private. 

Sitting in the reading-room of a hotel one morning, I 
saw a colored woman enter and courtesy to a gentleman 
opposite. 

" Good morning, sir. Please, sir, how is Ben ? " 
" Ben — he is very well. But I don't know you." 
" Ben is my husband. I heard you were in town, 
and I want you to buy me. My mistress is dead these 
three weeks, and the family is to be broken up." 
" Well, I will buy you. Where shall I inquire ? " 
All this was said and done in as short a time as it 
takes to read it ; but this woman was probably obliged 
by law, in the settlement of the estate, to be advertised 
and described. 

All these things go fai' to mitigate our feelmgs with 



74 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

regard to the sale of slaves at auction in many cases. 
But even with regard to these cases, no one who is not 
used to the sight will ever see it but with repugnance 
and distress. 

I walked with a gentleman, esteemed and honored by 
his fellow-citizens, and much intrusted with the settle- 
ment of estates. I knew that he would appreciate my 
feelings, and I disclosed them. I asked him if there 
were no other way of changing the relations of slaves 
in jDrocess of law, except by exposing them, male and 
female, at auction, on the court-house steps. I told him 
how I felt on seeing the girl sold, and that the knowl- 
edge subsequently of the satisfactory manner in which 
the case was disposed of did not make me cease to feel 
unhappy. I could not bear to see a fellow-being made 
a subject of sale, even in form; and I wondered that any 
one could look upon it with composure, or suffer it to be 
repeated without efforts to abolish it. 

His reply was, for substance, that so far as he and the 
people of his town were concerned, no case of hardship 
in the disposal of a slave had ever occurred there, to liis 
knowledge ; that he had settled a large number of estates, 
and in every case had disposed of the servants in ways 
satisfactory to themselves ; that he had prevented cer- 
tain men from bidding upon them ; that he had prevailed 
on others not to buy, because he and the servants were 
unwilling to have these men for their masters ; and, 
therefore, that the question was practically reduced to 
the expediency of the form of transfer, viz., by public 
vendue. 

He repeated what I have said of the desirableness that 
the sale or transfer should be public; whether in a 
room, or on steps, was unimportant, only that every 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 75 

public outcry was ordained to be made at the court- 
house. He also said that the slaves, knowing that the 
sale was a mere form, and that they were already dis- 
posed of, did not in such cases suffer to the degree which 
strangers supposed. 

It was evident, from all that he said, that he trans- 
fused his own kind, benevolent feehngs, and those of his 
fellow-citizens over every sale within the limits of his 
town, and could not, therefore, see it with a northerner's 
eyes and heart. 

The forms of law are as inconsiderate of our feelings 
as though they were acts of barbarians. A sheriff's 
sale of house furniture in the dwelling of a man who has 
fallen from opulence into insolvency is like the wheel 
of torture, that breaks every bone and joint one by one. 
The auctioneer, with precious household treasures, keep- 
sakes, memorials of dear departed friends, in one hand, 
and a crumpled newspaper for a hammer in the other, 
seems to be a most unfeeling man ; but he is not so ; it 
is law, of which he is the exponent, that is so terrible. 

No human being, innocent of crime, ought to be sub- 
jected to the rack of being offered for sale, nor ought 
fellow-creatures ever to behold that sight. It will be 
done away. Reproachful words, however, will not 
hasten the removal of it. 

I once stated the subject to a friend in this form : "We 
cannot expect that servants can abide in a house for- 
ever. Death breaks up their relations, and they must 
have other masters. Allowing all you say of their being 
necessarily a serving class, why not always give them a 
voice in changing these relations ? This is done uni- 
formly in some of your towns. I could name one in 
which no slave has been disposed of otherwise for ten 



76 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

years at least, except in cases of refractory and trouble- 
some persons. 

Then let opportunity be given for private inquiry and 
examination ; let the transfer be made without obliging 
the slave to be present, and this will approximate as far 
as possible to the method of obtaining servants at em- 
ployment offices. 

At the Christmas holidays, some of the southern 
cities and towns are alive with the negroes, in their best 
attire, seeking employment for the year to come, chan- 
ging places, and having full liberty to suit themselves as 
to their employers. The characters and habits of all 
the masters and mistresses are known and freely dis- 
cussed by them. 

- So, instead of selling a family at auction upon the 
death of a master, it is often the case that letters are 
written for them to people in diffigrent States, where they 
may happen to have acquaintances, perhaps to relatives 
of the master's family, known and beloved, asking them 
to buy ; and thus the family is disposed of to the satis- 
faction of all concerned. Wherever kindness prevails, 
the evils of slavery can be made to disappear as much 
as from any condition, especially where the servants 
are worthy. 

But then there are cases in which the feelings of the 
slave are wantonly disregarded, and the owners make no 
distinction, and are incapable of making any, between a 
negro and a mule. 

Then there are slaves who are vicious and disagreeable, 
whom their owners are glad to sell out of their sight, as 
other men are glad to be rid of certain apprentices or 
refractory children, and feel happier the greater the 
distance to which they remove. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 77 

Again, men in pecuniary straits, in the hands of a 
broker or sheriff, do things which excruciate themselves 
as much as then* slaves. Thus, in part, the domestic 
slave trade is maintained. 

Section II. — Domestic Slave Trade. 

A southern physician described to me a scene in the 
domestic slave trade. He touched at a landing-place in 
a steamer, and immediately a slave coflfle was marched 
on board. Men, women, and children, about forty in 
all, two by two, an ox chain passing through the double 
file, and a fastening reaching from the right and left 
hands of those on either side of the chain, composed 
what is called a slave coffie. Some colored people were 
on the wharf, who seemed to be relatives and friends of 
the, gang. Such shrieks, such unearthly noises, as re- 
sounded above the escape of steam, my informant said 
can not be described. There were partings for life, and 
between what degrees of kindred the nature of the cries 
were probably a sign. 

When the boat was on her way, my informant fell 
into conversation with a distinguished planter, vv'ith re- 
gard to tiie scene which they had just v/itnessed. They 
deplored it as one of the features of a system which they 
both mourned over, and wished to abolish, or at least 
correct, till no wrong, no pain, should be the fruit of it 
which is not incidental to every human lot. 

While they were discussing, the subject, the slave- 
dealer heard their talk, came up, and made advances to 
shake hands with the planter. The gentleman drew 
back, and said, " Sir, I consider you a disgrace to human 
nature." He poured scorn and indignation upon him. 



78 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

He sj^oke the feelings of the south generally. Negro 
traders are the abhorrence of all Hesh. Even their 
descendants, Avhen thej are known, and the property 
acquired in the traffic, have a blot upon them. I never 
knew a deeper aversion to any class of men ; it is safe 
to say, that generally it is not surpassed by our feelings 
toward foreign slave traders. 

They go into the States where the trade is not pro- 
hibited by law, find men Avho are in want of money, or 
a master who has a slave that is troublesome, and for the 
peace of the plantation that slave is sold, sometimes at 
great sacrifice ; and there are many of whom, under 
pecuniary pressure, it is not always difficult to purchase. 

There are some men whose diabolical natures are 
gratified by this traffic — passionate, cruel, tyrannical 
men, seeking dominion in some form to gratify these in- 
stincts. The personal examinations which they make, 
and the written descriptions which they give, of slaves 
whom they buy, are sometimes disgusting in the extreme. 
It is beyond explanation that good men at the south do 
not clamor against this thing, till the transfer of every 
human being, if he must be a slave, is made with all the 
care attending the probate of a will. 

The charge of vilely multiplying negroes in Vir- 
ginia, is one of those exaggerations of which this subject 
is full, and is reduced to this — that Virginia, being an 
old State, fully stocked, the surplus black population 
naturally flows off where their numbers are less. 

I heard this conversation at the breakfast house of a 
southern railroad. As several of us were warming our- 
selves at the fire, one of the passengers said to the keeper 
of the house, — 

" Where is Alonzo now ? " 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 79 

" He is in Alabama." 

" I thought he had come back." 

" Well, he was to come back some time ago ; but they 
keep sending him so many negroes to sell, he can't 
leave." 

Alonzo is probably a negro trader of the better sort ; 
a mere agent or factor. If slaves are to be sold, there 
must be men to negotiate with regard to them ; these 
are not all of the vilest sort ; yet their occupation is 
abhorred. 

The separation of families seems to be an inevitable 
feature of slavery, as it exists at present. If a man is 
rich and benevolent, he will provide for his servants, 
and tax himself to support them, let their number be 
never so great, buying one plantation after another, 
chiefly to employ his people. But the time will come 
when he must die, and his people are deprived of his 
protection. jSTo one child, perhaps, can afford to keep 
them together ; perhaps he has no children ; then they 
must take their chance of separations to the widest bor- 
ders of the slave States. But here individual kindness 
mitigates sorrow and distress. The owner of several 
plantations at the south, with no children, has made his 
slaves his heirs, on condition that they remove to Liberia. 

It seems to be taken for granted that to be sold is 
inevitably to pass from a good to an inferior condition.. 
This is as much a mistake as it would be to assert the 
same of changes on the part of domestic servants in the 
free States. There are as good masters as those whose 
death makes it necessary to scatter the slaves of an 
estate. The change itself is not necessarily an evil. 

We must remember that slaves are not the only inhab- 
itants, nor slave families the only families, in the land, 
6 



80 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

that are scattered by the death of others. Sometimes 
the demand seems to be that slaves should be kept to- 
gether at all events, and separations never be permitted. 
This is absurd, upon the least reflection. No one ought 
to demand or expect for them an experience better or 
worse than the common lot of men. Let the slaves share 
'with us in the common blessings and calamities of divine 
•providence. What would become of our fiimilies of five 
or ten children should their parents die ? Can we keep 
our children about us always ? Do none but black children 
go to the ends of the Union and become settled there? 
How many white people there are that do this, who — de- 
.plorable truth ! — cannot read and write, and seldom if 
•ever hear of their relatives from whom they are separated. 
Let us not require too much of slavery. Let us not 
insist that the slaves shall never be separated, nor their 
families broken up ; but let it be done as in the course of 
nature every where, with no more pain, nor pain of any 
•other kind, than must accrue to those who depend upon 
their own efforts for a living. 

Facts connected with this part of the subject have 
given me deep respect and sympathy for those slavehold- 
ers who, from the number of instances which have come 
to my knowledge, it is evident are by no means few, that 
suffer hardship and loss in their efforts to keep the mem- 
bers of their slave families together. Our knowledge of 
distressing cases, and the indisputable truth that slavery 
gives the power of disposal to the owner at his will, no 
doubt leads us to exaggerate the number of cases in 
which suffering is unjustly inflicted. While we are sure 
to hear of distressing cruelties, ten thousand acts of 
kindness are not mentioned. These can not compensate, 
however, for the liabihty to abuse which there is in 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 81 

authority almost absolute ; but still let us discmninate 
when we bring charges against a whole community, and 
let us consider how far the evils complained of are insep- 
arable, not only from a system which is felt to be a bur- 
den, but also from human nature in every condition. 

As was remarked with regard to sales by auction, it is 
in vain to expect that painful separations of families in a 
wanton manner, or by stress of circumstances, can wholly 
cease, in the present system. It is indeed a burdensome 
system, destroying itself by its own weight, unless re- 
lieved by some of those unnatural and violent expedi- 
ents. It is deplored for this and other reasons by mul- 
titudes at the south, whose voices we shall hear as soon 
as our relations as north and south are such as will 
allow them to speak. In the mean time, public sentiment 
is fast correcting abuses under the system ; and not only 
so, but through its influence and the power of Christian 
love, the condition of famiHes and individuals among the 
slaves is becoming here and there as free from evil as 
human nature permits in a dependent condition. 



82 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

REVOLTING FEATURES OF SLAVERY — Continued. 

Section III. — Homes of the Slaves. 

The homes of the slaves is a topic of deep interest, 
bearing in a vital manner upon the system. It can hardly 
be said in general that slaves have regularly constituted 
homes. Husbands and wives, in a large proportion of 
cases, belong to different masters, and reside on separate 
plantations, the husband sometimes walking several miles, 
night and morning, to and from his family, and many of 
them returning home only on Saturday afternoon. In 
cities, also, husbands and wives most commonly belong 
to different families. Laboring apart, and having their 
meals apart, the bonds of domestic life are few and 
weak. A slave, his wife, and their children, around that 
charmed centre, a family table, with its influences of 
love, instruction, discipline, humble as they necessarily 
would be, yet such as God had given them, are too sel- 
dom seen. To encourage and protect their homes gen- 
erally would be in effect to \)\\i an end to slavery as it is. 

It was remarked to me by an eminent and venerable 
physician at the south, that maternal attachments in 
slave mothers are singularly shorthved. Their pain 
and grief at the sale of their children, their jealousy, 
their self-sacrificing efforts for them, are peculiar ; but 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 83 

thej are easily supplanted. The hen, and even the timid 
partridge, is roused when her young are in danger, 
and her demonstrations of affection then are unsur- 
passed. Yet in a few weeks she will treat her offspring 
as strangers. Maternal instincts in slave mothers (my 
friend observed) were more like this than the ordinary 
parental feelings of white people. 

I told him that this disclosed to me one of the most 
affecting illustrations of slavery, and that I needed not 
to ask him for his explanation of it. Every one can see, 
not only the probability, but the cause, of this limited 
parental affection. From the first moment of maternal 
soHcitude, the idea of property on the part of the owner 
in the offspring is connected with the maternal instinct. 
It grows side by side with it, becomes a neutralizing ele- 
ment, prevents the inviolable links of natural affection 
from reaching deep into the heart. We need no slave 
auctions or separations of families to make us feel the 
inherent, awful nature of the present system of slavery, 
in view of this illustration. 

Some use it in mitigation of the alleged wrongful- 
ness of separating mothers and young children. Human 
nature refuses to hear one who is capable of using such 
an argument. 

The same day that my friend made his remark to 
me, I had an accidental confirmation of it in the conver- 
sation of an intelligent landlord, who was telling me of 
the recent lamentable death of an old slave mother who 
had nursed him and all his brothers and sisters. His 
mother said to the dying woman, " How do you feel about 
leaving your children ? '* for she had several, who were 
still young. " missis," she said, '* you will take care 
of them; I don't mind them. I don't want to leave 



84 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

you, missis, and your Charley and Ann. What will 
they do without me, little dears ? " The gentleman men- 
tioned it as an affecting illustration, as it certainly is, of 
the disinterested affection in these colored servants ; 
but I felt that there was something back of all this. 
Slavery had loosened the natural attachments of this 
woman to her offspring, and those attachments had 
sought and found objects to grow upon in the children 
of another. There must be something essentially wrong 
in a system which thus interferes with the nature which 
God has made. 

The drapery of words is hardly sufficient, perhaps, to 
clothe an idea which a slave mother in one of the best 
of Christian families expressed ; but she was deprecating 
the possibility of being a mother again. She said, " You 
feel when your child is born that you can't have the 
bringing of it up." 

One evening, in a prayer meeting of slaves, the white 
brother who presided read the chapter in Matthew con- 
taining the Lord's Prayer, and asked me to make some 
remarks. I alluded to the Lord's Prayer, which had 
just been read, and was proceeding to remark upon por- 
tions of it. I found myself embarrassed, however, at 
once, in speaking about that overwhelming name of love 
— Our Father, who art in heaven ; for it flashed upon me, 
these slaves, although they have the spirit of sons, al- 
though they cry " Abba, Father," as I seldom ever heard 
other Christians use the name, can not appreciate any 
illustrations of it which I may draw from earthly parent- 
age ; they know the thing ; the illustration they cannot 
fully appreciate, for in effect the slave has no father. 
He more frequently remembers his mother; but who was 
his father ? His knowledge of him is far less frequent. 



A SOUTH-SIDE YIEAY OF SLAVERY. 85 

The annihilation by slavery, to a great extent, of the 
father in the domestic relations of the slaves, is insepa- 
rable from it, as it exists at f)resent. 

Take a further illustration. I was in a large colored 
Sabbath school. The superintendent at the close gave 
the scholars a kind word of exhortation to this effect : 
" Now, children, I want to repeat what I have said to you 
so often ; you must all try to be good children, wherever 
you are, remembering that you are never out of God's 
sight. If you love and obey him, if you are good chil- 
dren at home, what a comfort you will be to your " [I ex- 
pected the ^vords fathers and mothers'] " masters and mis- 
tresses." I felt as when I have heard the earth fall upon 
a stranger's coffin ; it was all correct, all kind ; but the 
inability to use those names, the perfect naturalness with 
which other names came in to fill the j^lace of father and 
mother, brought to my heart the truth, the slaves gener- 
ally have no homes. 

Living disintegrated as they now do, it is easier to 
transfer them from place to place. Thus the prevalence 
of homes in slavery, regularly constituted and defended, 
would soon make slavery almost impracticable, or reduce 
it to almost an unobjectionable form. The red sandstone 
soil in parts of the south is destroyed, large sections 
being washed away, leaving a hard, clayey surface. That 
beautiful feature of New England, our northern grass, 
does not prevail there, with its thick-set roots to bind 
the soil. Homes among the slaves would be to them 
what the grass would be to the soil. 

Separated as they necessarily are under the present 
system, the relations of husbands and wives are not so 
inviolable as they otherwise would be. Marriage among 
the slaves is not a civil contract ; it is formed and con- 



86 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

tinues by permission of the masters ; it has no binding 
force, except as moral principle preserves it ; and it is 
subject, of course, to the changes of fortune on the part 
of the owners. This is the theory ; but humane and 
benevolent hearts in every community combine to modi- 
fy its operation ; yet there are cases of hardship over 
which they are compelled to weep, and very many of 
them do weep as we should in their places ; still the sys- 
tem remains, and now and then asserts its awful power. 

There is a lad at the south about fifteen years old, 
whose form, features, manners, and general aptitude in- 
terested me m him very much, whose mother has had 
three husbands sold within three years. To see him 
while talking throw himself from one seat to another, 
and upon the floor, in the abandonment of grief, with 
wailings cursing his birth, it would seem is enough to 
prevent any stranger from falling in love with sla- 
very. In these three cases, straitened circumstances 
compelled the sales. 

Yet the cases of violent separation of husband and 
wife are not so many as the voluntary and criminal sepa- 
rations by the parties themselves. This, after all, is the 
chief evil connected with the looseness of domestic ties 
in slavery. Conjugal love among the slaves is not inva- 
riably the poetical thing which amateurs of slaves some- 
times picture it ; for there are probably no more happy 
conjugal unions among the slaves than among the whites. 

At the spring term, this year, of the court in one New 
England State, there were eighty-three applications for 
divorce ; thirty-three were granted, seven were refused, 
and forty-three were reserved for consideration. In 
another State, at the same term, there were seventy- 
three applications J forty -two were granted, four were 



A SOrTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 87 

refused, and three were settled ; the rest were continued. 
Probably in no slave State were there more voluntary sep- 
arations of husbands and wives among the slaves than in 
some of the New England States that could be specified 
for the same period. The only difference is, the slave 
does not go to court for his divorce. He absents him- 
self from his cabin, or procures another master ; or, be- 
longing to the same master with his wife, and being 
unfiling to live within possible hearing of her, he flees 
to the north. If he has a good degree of address, he 
can rouse up the deep j^hilanthropy of freemen, like a 
ground-swell of the sea, in overwhelming pity and com- 
passion for him ; while the only unhappiness, after all, in 
his particular case, was, that he could not have laws to 
countenance and defend him in putting away his wife, 
who had committed no crime, and marrying another. 
The people of those communities whose laws of divorce 
are of questionable morality, Avill not, of course, throw 
the first stone at the south, for that looseness in the do- 
mestic relations of slaves which allows so many volunta- 
ry separations. 

I have conversed with pastors of churches at the south 
on this subject. Human nature is the same among 
the whites as among the blacks, but the mode of life 
among the slaves gives peculiar facilities for vice ; the 
separation of husbands and wives by sale encourages 
them to think lightly of mutual obligations, and conju- 
gal faithfulness for the time yields easily to temptation. 
They are faithfully preached to from the pulpit on the 
subject, religious restraints are felt, the expectation of 
honorable marriage has influence, and it is libelous to 
say that there are not very many in the churches who 
keep themselves pure. Still it is universally confessed 



88 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

that one prominent evil of slavery is seen in this. The 
pastor of a colored church says to me, in a letter, " The 
violation of the law of chastity among my congregation 
is the besetting sin. Of the three hundred and seven- 
teen persons excluded during a certain period, as ap- 
pears by our church books, two hundred were for adul- 
tery." But this is a congregation in which an unusually 
large proportion are free blacks. There are restraints 
imposed upon slaves in this particular, in many cases, 
which, of course, are not felt by those who are free. 
Knowing, as ministers in cities are apt to do, the sta- 
tistics of crime, it would be gratifying if we could assert 
that our northern cities are examj)les to the south in all 
goodness. After reading all that has ever been written 
respecting the sale and purchase of " yellow girls," and 
the extent to which the sin alluded to prevails at the 
south, you may obtain from any experienced policeman 
in one of our cities disclosures which will give exercise 
to virtuous abhorrence and indignation as great as the 
statistics of sin and misery elsewhere can excite, unless, 
indeed, wickedness at home fails to exert the enchant- 
ment which belongs to other men's sins. What if there 
were some way in which this iniquity in the free States 
proclaimed itself as it does through complexion at the 
south ? 

" Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before 
to judgment, and some men they follow after." 

Christian public sentiment at the south revolts at the 
sale of one's own children as instinctively as at the north, 
and points the finger at this abomination. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



Section TV. — Domestic Evils deplored hy the Whites. 

There are evils pertaining to slavery of wliicli none 
are so well aware as those who are subjected to them ; 
and therefore the free and candid declaration of the 
people at the south upon this part of the subject is far 
more convincing and satisfactory than our theoretical 
reasonings. 

They complain of the injurious effect of slave labor 
upon the soil, there being no motives with the slave to 
improve or preserve it ; but this is too obvious a topic 
to require a single remark. 

Labor performed wholly by menial persons becomes 
disreputable in the eyes of children. Those who can 
afford to educate their children to live in affluence are 
not oppressed by this evil as others are whose children 
eschew trades and every thing requiring manual labor, 
and, irrespective of talent, must resort to the army and 
navy and the learned professions for a living. Society 
is happier where a portion of its own talent and enter- 
prise is employed in the mechanic arts. It is the provi- 
dential arrangement that invention shall be the offspring 
of labor, they who work being those ordinarily who con- 
fer upon the world the fruits of genius Slaves invent 
little or nothing. The healthful stimulus of necessity 
finds few heads or hands at the south among the labor- 
ing class, almost every thing necessary to quicken and 
help labor being imported. It is a serious evil wdiich 
parents in slave States feel, that they do not enjoy the 
privilege of employing the talents and aiding the con- 



90 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

stitutioiis of some of tlieir cliildren by addicting tliem 
at home to the useful arts, which abound where labor is 
honorable and is rewarded. Temptations to vice, and the 
mischiefs of an aimless, idle life, are the source of great 
solicitude and pain to many southern parents with re- 
gard to their sons. 

We greatly err when we make this an occasion for 
reproach. There is a way of taunting the south with 
this and other inseparable inconveniences and evils of 
their state of society which is unkind. Their reply 
might well be, " God has given us ' a south land,' as 
Caleb gave to his daughter. that he could give us also, 
as she requested, ' springs of water.' Sources of refresh- 
ment and comfort which you at the north enjoy are, 
some of them, withheld from us." 

Were it not for the din and clamor of northern in- 
vectives against slavery, we should hear more distinct- 
ly the candid expressions of our southern friends with 
regard to evils in tlie system. 

They tell us — and indeed every one sees it — that 
slave labor is in many cases oppressively expensive, and 
the more so in proportion to the conscientiousness and 
kindness of the owners. It takes more hands to do the 
same amount of work than with us; the servants are 
hearty, and great consumers, frequently costing more for 
their food than the rest of the family ; and some of them 
could be dispensed with, but they came into the family 
in ways, perhaps, which make their owners unwilling to 
put them away. This is an evil in slavery of which we 
at the north have very little idea, and it does much to 
disabuse a spectator of wrong impressions made by his 
associations with the word slavery and slave. One case 
out of many in every southern town may be mentioned, 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 91 

of a matron, a widow, who, during her husband's life, 
was in easy circumstances ; but he having left her with 
some colored women and their children, she receives 
boarders that she may have means to support these 
blacks, being unwilling to sell them, but expecting the 
time when she can place them in advantageous situa- 
tions. She would pass at the north under the name of 
" slaveholder," with all the peculiar associations with 
that name in the minds of many. It was affecting to 
hear her say, " If our friends at the north would devise 
ways in which we could dispose of these poor people 
for their good, I should then no longer be a servant of 
servants." 

There are, probably, few who would not abstractly 
prefer free labor ; but what shall be done with the blacks ? 
There has never been a time in the history of our dis- 
cussions on this subject, when, if the south had ex- 
pressed her willingness to part with the slaves, we at 
the north could have agreed in what way they should 
have been disposed of. Who has ever proposed a plan 
of relief which could in a good measure unite us ? What 
shall be done with the blacks ? On the evils of slavery 
all are well informed. But as to this essential question 
we get no light. 



Taking all the favorable features and all the evils of 
southern slavery together simply as to their bearing upon 
the slave, it appears that, leaving out of view the liabil- 
ities to separation, to be a slave at the south is an evil 
or not according to the character or habits of the master. 
The master or mistress can make the relation of a slave 



VZ A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

the very best on earth for one who must be dependent. 
One can not be long at the south, and not see for himself 
that the perfection of human happiness hi a serving class 
is found among certain slaves. There is nothing that 
approaches to it except the relation of certain servants 
and dependants of noble families in Great Britain ; but 
at the south the relation and the happiness do not depend 
upon ftimily and wealth ; every householder may be a 
master or mistress to whom it will be a privilege to be- 
long. Instances come to mind of servants in whose con- 
dition nothing is wanting to promote happiness in this 
world and preparation for the next ; and the only source 
of disquietude in such cases you will hear thus expressed : 
" Master may die, and then I shall have to be free. I 
have laid up money, and am mentioned in the will, and 
my free j^apers are made out." Such servants sometimes 
select new masters, and prevail on them to buy them, 
preferring the feeling of protection, the gratification of 
loving and serving a white person, to abstract liberty. 

Then there is another side to this picture. It is in 
the power of a master or mistress to make the condition 
of the slave a perpetual sorrow. It would be well if 
some men, and women too, could be debarred by law 
from having authority over a human being. One looks 
with pity even upon the animal that belongs to them. 
Imperative, fierce, threatening in their tones, petulant 
and cruel in their dispositions, capricious and contradic- 
tory in their orders, and full of scolding, the word and 
blow coming together, they wear out the patience of their 
servants. No wonder that the slaves of such men and 
women run away, that white boys in similar circum- 
stances betake themselves to the sea, and girls elope or 
go to service, as a refuge from such dispositions and 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 93 

tongues. A certain distinguished slave owner seriously 
entertains the desire, for which his friends banter him, 
that every one proposing to be a slaveholder shall bring 
certificates of good temper, and be examined. To one 
who was a most thorough lover of the system of slavery 
I put the question, in a favorable moment, " What, in 
your view, is the greatest objection that can be made to 
slavery ? " " 0," said he, " this irresponsible ' power. 
You can not prevent its abuse while human nature is what 
it is. Good and kind men and women can make a slave 
happier than he could be any where ; but certain mas- 
ters and mistresses of slaves are the worst of tyrants." 

There are some men to whom a negro is merely an ox 
or an ass. They buy, sell, work, treat, talk about, their 
" niggers " as about cattle — hard, sharp, vulgar men, of 
whom we have a good idea in the following extract from 
the journal of a traveler in Texas, which appeared some 
time since in a newspaper, and which I read and veri- 
fied at the south. The writer says, — 

" I remember, now, one gentleman of property in , 

sitting with us one night, ' spitting in the fire,' and talking 
about cotton. Bad luck he had had — only four and a 
half bales to the hand ; couldn't account for it — bad 
luck ; and next year he didn't reckon nothing else but 
that there would be a general war in Europe, and then 
he'd be in a pretty fix, with cotton down to four cents a 
pound. Curse those Turks ! If he thought there would 

be a general war, he would take every nigger he'd 

got right down to New Orleans, and sell them for what 
they'd bring. They'd never be so high again as they are 
now, and if there should come a general war they wouldn't 
be worth half so much next year. There always were 



94 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

some infernal rascals some where in the world trying to 
prevent an honest man from getting a living. 0, if 
thej got to fighting, he hoped they'd eat each other 
up. They just ought to be, all of them — Turks, and 
Russians, and Prussians, and Dutchmen, and French- 
men — all of them just be put in a bag together, and 
slung . That's what he'd do with them." 



It will generally be expected that punishment by 
whipping should be mentioned among the revolting fea- 
tures of slavery. In a well-regulated southern house- 
hold, as in a well-ordered family of children, or a good 
school, the rod is out of sight. It is seldom alluded to ; 
threatenings are rare ; but the knowledge on the part 
of each servant, child, and pupil, that there is a punish- 
ment in reserve for the last resort, will have a salutary 
effect. Southern ladies, when they meet insolence or 
disobedience in their slaves, have not our easy means of 
relief in dismissing them at once, and repairing to the 
intelligence offices for others. They must have them 
punished, or they must continue to bear with them, as 
they often do, with long and exemplary patience, shrink- 
ing as we should from subjecting them to punishment ; 
or they must sell them, as incorrigible, to the slave trader, 
which is far worse than chastisement, however severe. 
In good hands this power is exercised without abuse. 

This power is also in the hands of the cruel and un- 
principled, and is fearfully abused. Slaves, however, 
are not the only subjects of these cruelties, nor masters 
of slaves the only transgressors. The following extract 
taken from a newspaper, with remarks upon it by a 
southern editor, are given here partly for the sake of a 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 95 

comment upon the strictures of the editor. Some of 
his remarks are just. It is the legislature of a free State 
which is referred to. 

" The legislature has before it an investigation into 

the conduct of j of the state prison, who is accused 

of cruelty toward a colored prisoner whom he suspected 
of stealing from him three hundred dollars. It is alleged 
he deprived him of his clothing, and confined him in a 
dungeon without a bed for sixteen days. At three separate 
times he was brought out, stripped to his skin, and whipped 
with a cat till his back M'as cut to pieces, and the blood 
made to flow from the w^ounds. In this condition he was 
put back into his dark, damp, cold cell, without a bed or 
particle of bedclothes, to pass three days and nights as 
best he could. At the end of that time he was again taken 
out, whipped as before, and this repeated for three times ; 
and when last put back, he was told that he would be con- 
fined and whipped every day till the expiration of his sen- 
tence, if he did not confess." 

A southern editor says, with regard to this para- 
graph,— 

" It were an easy matter to cull from every northern mail 
that reaches us accounts of individual instances of cruelty 
and brutality. It would not be venturing too far to say, 
that, for every three hundred and sixty-five days in the 
year, the New York, Philadelphia, and Boston papers con- 
tain the particulars of some inhuman exercise of authority, 
some outrageous case of arson or burglary, or some horri- 
ble murder of a wife by her husband, or of a husband by 
his wife, of a child by its parent, or of a parent by the child. 
We might make out a catalogue of sins and offences al- 
most sufficient to overwhelm these cities with the terrible 
fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, should the divine justice 
subject them to the same conditions imposed upon those 
ancient sinks of iniquity. We might even arrive at the 
conclusion that there was something radically wrong and 
corrupt in the framework of society where enormities of 
the most frightful and disgusting character are of such fre- 
quent occurrence. -^ * # We all know that the most 
heinous violations of law, at the north as well as at the 
south, are seldom followed by an execution. We know, 

7 



96 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

further, that the disgusting details of a divorce case have 
been known to divide public attention in New York with 
a revolution in France, and that the brutal pugilist Tom 
Hyer, on his return from his victory over Yankee Sullivan, 
was paraded up Broadway in an open carriage. 

" We do not choose, however, to abuse the position we 
occupy as a public journalist. We know there are just 
as good people at the north as there are at the south, or 
any where else. We know there are violators of law in 
all countries and under all circumstances of life, and that 
it is both wrong and untruthful to charge their crimes upon 
the communities in which they reside, or upon any one of 
the institutions with which they are surrounded. Freedom 
is not responsible for the sins of the north, nor is slavery 
amenable for the transgressions of the south. Whatever 
is wrong in either section should be ascribed to the proper 
cause — to that perverted nature which led Cain to take 
the life of his brother, and which has filled the earth with 
all the evil and woe which have afflicted it from that day 
until this." 

Now, suppose that the papers of the south should have 
each a corps of reporters to pry every where for stirring 
items in connection with slavery, and that those papers 
should have the same inducements to publish them which 
our papers have to report the last instances of abuse and 
crime here. 

We will not say that the balance in favor of the south 
would be changed ; but the suggestion will not be gain- 
said, that to make the cases parallel, the means of in- 
formation in the two cases must be the same. 

Passing by a plantation, I saw a white man standing 
in a field near the road, with his arms folded, and a large 
whip in his hand. A little farther on, I came to a row 
of fifteen or twenty negroes, hoeing industriously, with- 
out lifting their heads to look at those who were going 
by. Had I told this overseer how I felt on seeing him, 
he would probably have repUed, that my feelings were 
northern prejudices ; that he never strikes the negroes, 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 97 

and is on good terms with them ; that his whip is partly 
in self-defence in case of need, and partly to enforce, by 
its bare presence, his orders, in refractory cases, should 
they occur. But he was a revolting sight. 

Many planters do not employ white overseers, but 
use some of the hands in their stead, paying them for 
tliis responsibility. Touching instances of faithfulness 
are related of these colored head men. The white over- 
seers have it in their power, of course, to perpetrate 
many tyrannical and cruel acts ; but we must not sup- 
pose that southern masters are indifferent to wrongs and 
outrages committed against their slaves. There is a 
public sentiment to which they are amenable ; a cruel, 
neglectful master is marked and despised ; and if cruel 
or neglectful by proxy, he does not escape reprobation. 
It was not unusual to hear one say of another, " I have 
been told that he does not use his people well." This 
is a brand upon a man which he and his family ai'e made 
to feel deeply. But this is true only of certain states 
of society. 

Slaveholding, like every relation, is a net which gath- 
ers of every kind. There are elements in it, at the 
south, fitted to promote the highest happiness and wel- 
fare, temporal and spiritual, of the negro ; and it can 
make him perfectly miserable. Many things charged 
against slavery are chargeable to * construction account' 
in human nature. 

The most common expression at the south, with re- 
gard to slavery, is, " It is a great curse." An intelligent 
gentleman, a slaveholder, said, in answer to a question, 
that unquestionably four-fifths of the people of his State, 
one of the oldest slave States, would be entirely free from 



98 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

it were it possible. It is well known that several slave 
States have been upon the borders of emancipation. In 
the public debates which have been had in Virginia at 
different times on this subject are to be found some of 
the most able and thorough arguments against slavery. 
Here is one illustration, among many which might be 
given, of antislavery feeling at the south, just previous 
to the recent excitement with regard to Nebraska and 
Kansas. The Providence Journal says, — 

Slavery in Western Virginia. — A good deal of 
excitement has been caused in Wheeling by the course 
of the Times newspaper in that city, openly favoring the 
abolition of slavery. There are few slaves in Western 
Virginia, and the country is not adapted to slave labor ; but 
the sentiment of the State, its feelings, prejudices, and tra- 
ditions are all so intensely favorable to slavery, that it 
requires no little boldness for a man to stand up in the 
midst of all these unfavorable influences, and speak the 
plain truth. The boldness of the Times in doing so was 
attempted to be rebuked by a public meeting, called to 
condemn the abolitionism of that print. The meeting was 
large ; the resolutions condemning the Times were voted 
down, and others were substituted approving of the hon- 
esty and independence of its course. The following is the 
manner in which the Times discusses the question of sla- 
very, and these are the sentiments which the people read, 
and which they defend the editor for pubhshing : — 

" We are in favor of taking the earliest possible means 
of getting rid of slavery in the State of Virginia, with jus- 
tice to the master, safety to the State, and comfort and 
convenience to the laboring population now in it. 

'' We desire it because it has retarded the progress of the 
people since it became a State, impoverishing its inhabit- 
ants, reducing its population, and staying the development 
of the vast natural resources that abound in the State, to a 
greater extent than in any other State in the Union. Had 
it not been for slavery, Norfolk would now be what New 
York and Philadelphia are. Norfolk has the best harbor 
in the Union, and the natural soil that extends from the 
coast to the Blue Ridge is among the best in the country. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 99 

Had that institution not existed there, or if it should be 
removed, how long would it be before Norfolk would be 
among the first cities, and the worn-out lands in that region 
of country, that are now owned in five hundred and one 
thousand acre tracts, (and hardly support a family at that,) 
would be divided into fifty acre tracts, each of which would 
be tilled by the hands of the hardy and intelligent repub- 
lican, not only to yield a support, but competence and 
riches, to a large and happy family — happy in their indus- 
try and intelligence 1 

'- No one dare deny that such would be the result. Is it 
not right, then, that we should express such opinions 1 We 
are parties interested as well as they ; for what benefits or 
injures one part of the State, benefits or injures the other 
part." 

A southern correspondent of the New York Observer 
thus expresses himself: "Though born and raised 
among the Green Mountains, I have been more than 
thirty years at the south, and I hold slaves ; yet I think 
I can do justice to the feelings of north and south. I 
believe slavery is a curse to the south, and many others 
believe it, who wiU not own it, on account of the fanatic 
efforts of the abolitionists. When I speak of it as a 
curse, I mean in all its relations of master and servant — 
the bad influence it has upon our passions, upon our 
children, destroying that sense of moral responsibility 
which ought to bear upon us." 



100 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER IX. 



APPROACHES TO EMANCIPATION. 

The country found in its bosom, at the time of our 
confederation, about seven hundred thousand slaves. 
The following, from a recent number of the National 
Intelligencer, presents an accurate and clear view of an 
important part of our history in connection with this 
subject : — 

The Constitution and Slavery. — The journal of 
the Convention to frame the present Constitution of the 
United States exhibits the following facts in connection 
with the subject of slavery : — 

" The first committee on the subject consisted of Rut- 
ledge of South Carolina, Randolph of Virginia, Wilson of 
Pennsylvania, Gorham of Massachusetts, and Ellsworth of 
Connecticut ; and the)^ reported, as a section for the Con- 
stitution, 'that no tax or other duty should be laid on the 
migration or importation of such persons as the several 
States shall think proper to admit, nor shall such migration 
or importation be prohibited^ " 

This was the first action of the Convention on the sla- 
very question ; and it will be seen that a committee, the 
majority of which were from what are strong antislavery 
States, reported against any future prohibition of the African 
slave trade, but were willing to legalize it perpetually. 

This section was subsequently referred to a committee, 
selected by ballot, consisting of Langdpn of New Hamp- 
shire, King of Massachusetts, Johnson of Connecticut, 
Livingston of New Jersey, Clymer of Pennsylvania, Dick- 
inson of Delaware, Martin of Maryland, Madison of Vir- 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 101 

ginia, Williamson of North Carolina, Pinckney of South 
Carolina, and Bald\vin of Georgia. 

This committee, a majority of which were from slave 
States, (then and now.) reported the clause, with authority 
to Congress to prohibit the slave trade after the year 1800, 
and in the mean time with authority to levy a tax on such 
importations. This section was afterwards modified and 
adopted as it now exists in the Constitution, extending the 
time before which Congress could not prohibit the trade un- 
til 1808 — Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecti- 
cut, free States, and JNIaryland, North and South Carolina, 
slave States, voting for the extension ; New Jersey and 
Pennsylvania, free States, and Delaware and Virginia, 
slave States, voting against it. 

From the above it appears — 

1. A committee, the majority of which were from free 
States, report in favor of denying to Congress the power at 
any period to prohibit the African slave trade. 

2. That a subsequent committee, a majority of which 
were from the slave States, reported a new section, author- 
izing Congress to abolish the trade after the year 1800. 

3. That this period was extended until the year 1808, 
thus giving eight additional years to the traffic, by the 
vote of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, 
whilst the vote of Virginia was against such extension. 



The New York Tribune, of about the same date, 
says, — 

"Had the New England States voted against the 
extension, the slave trade would have been abolished 
eight years earlier, preventing the importation of more 
than a hundred thousand into this country, and there 
would have been at the present time a less number of 
slaves in the United States by at least three hundred 
thousand." 

The southern heart and conscience at last found ex- 
pression on the subject of Slavery in that most remark- 
able document adopted by the General Assembly of the 



102 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

Presbyterian Churcli of tlie United States in 1818, and 
now contained in the Assembly's Digest. Its interest 
and its connection with what follows warrant its inser- 
tion here. 

" The committee to which was referred the resolution on 
the subject of selling a slave, a member of the church, and 
which was directed to prepare a report to be adopted by 
the Assembly, expressing their opinion in general on the 
subject of slavery, reported, and, their report being read, 
was unanimously adopted, and referred to the same com- 
mittee for publication. It is as follows, viz. : — 

" The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, 
having taken into consideration the subject of slavery, 
think proper to make known their sentiments upon it to the 
churches and people under their care. 

" We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the 
human race by another as a gross violation of the most 
precious and sacred rights of human nature ; as utterly in- 
consistent with the law of God, which requires us to love 
our neighbor as ourselves ; and as totally irreconcilable 
with the spirit and principles of the gospel of Christ, which 
enjoin that ' all things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them.' Slavery creates 
a paradox in the moral system — it exhibits rational, ac- 
countable, and immortal beings in such circumstances 
as scarcely to leave them the power of moral action. It 
exhibits them as dependent on the will of others, whether 
they shall receive religious instruction ; whether they shall 
know and worship the true God; whether they shall enjoy 
the ordinances of the gospel ; whether they shall per- 
form the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands 
and wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends ; 
whether they shall preserve their chastity and purity, or 
regard the dictates of justice and humanity. Such are 
some of the consequences of slavery — consequences not 
imaginary — but which connect themselves with its very 
existence. The evils to which the slave is always exposed 
often take place in fact, and in their very worst degree and 
form ; and where all of them do not take place — as we 
rejoice to say that in many instances, through the influence 
of the principles of humanity and religion on the minds of 
masters, they do not, — still the slave is deprived of his 
natural right, degraded as a human being, and exposed to 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 103 

the danger of passing into the hands of a master who may 
inflict upon him all the hardships and injuries which in- 
humanity and avarice may suggest. 

'• From this view of the consequences resulting from the 
practice into which Christian people have most inconsist- 
ently fallen, of enslaving a portion of their brethren of 
mankind, — for 'God hath made of one blood all nations 
of men to dwell on the face of the earth/ — it is mani- 
festly the duty of all Christians who enjoy the light of the 
present day, when the inconsistency of slavery, both with 
the dictates of humanity and religion, has been demon- 
strated, and is generally seen and acknowledged, to use 
their honest, earnest, and unwearied endeavors to correct 
the errors of former times, and as speedily as possible to 
efface this blot on our holy religion, and to obtain the com- 
plete abolition of slavery thronghout Christendom, and if 
possible throughout the world. 

" We rejoice that the church to which we belong com- 
menced as early as any other in this country the good work 
of endeavoring to put an end to slavery, and that in the 
same work many of its members have ever since been, 
and now are, among the most active, vigorous, and effi- 
cient laborers. We do indeed tenderly sympathize with 
those portions of our church and our country where the 
evil of slavery has been entailed upon them ; where a 
great, and the most virtuous, part of the community abhor 
slavery, and wish its extermination, as sincerely as any 
others, but where the number of slaves, their ignorance, 
and their vicious habits generally, render an immediate 
and universal emancipation inconsistent alike with the 
safety and happiness of the master and the slave. With^ 
those who are thus circumstanced we repeat that we ten- 
derly sympathize. At the same time, we earnestly exhort 
them to continue, and, if possible, to increase their exer- 
tions to effect a total abolition of slavery. We exhort them 
to suffer no greater delay to take place in this most inter- 
esting concern than a regard to the public welfare truly 
and indispensably demands. 

'• As our country has inflicted a most grievous injury on 
the unhappy Africans, by bringing them into slavery, we 
cannot, indeed, urge that we should add a second injury to 
the first, by emancipating them in such a manner as that 
they will be likely to destroy themselves or others. But 
we do think that our country ought to be governed, in this 
matter, by no other consideration than an honest and im- 
partial regard to the happiness of the injured party, un- 



104 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

influenced by the expense or inconvenience which such a 
regard may involve. We therefore warn all Avho belong to 
our denomination of Christians against unduly extending 
this plea of necessity ; against making it a cover for the 
love and practice of slavery, or a pretence for not using 
efforts that are lawful and practicable to extinguish the 
evil. 

" And we at the same time exhort others to forbear harsh 
censures and uncharitable reflections on their brethren, 
who unhappily live among slaves, whom they cannot im- 
mediately set free, but who, at the same time, are really 
using all their influence and all their endeavors to bring 
them into a state of freedom as soon as a door for it can 
be safely opened. 

" Having thus expressed our views of slavery, and of the 
duty indispensably incumbent on all Christians to labor 
for its complete extinction, we proceed to recommend — 
and we do it with all the earnestness and solemnity which 
this momentous subject demands — a particular attention 
to the following points : — 

" We recommend to all our people to patronize and en- 
courage the Society, lately formed, for Colonizing in Africa, 
the land of their ancestors, the free people of color in our 
country. We hope that much good may result from the 
plans and efl'orts of this Society. And while we exceed- 
ingly rejoice to have witnessed its origin and organization 
among the holders of slaves, as giving an unequivocal 
pledge of their desire to deliver themselves and their coun- 
try from the calamity of slaver}'', we hope that those por- 
tions of the American Union whose inhabitants are, by a 
gracious Providence, more favorably circumstanced, will 
cordially, and liberally, and earnestly cooperate wnth their 
brethren in bringing about the great end contemplated. 

" We recommend to all the members of our religious de- 
nomination, not only to permit, but to facilitate and en- 
courage, the instruction of their slaves in the principles 
and duties of the Christian religion ; by granting them 
liberty to attend on the preaching of the gospel, when 
they have the opportunity ; by favoring the instruction of 
them in Sabbath schools, wherever those schools can be 
formed ; and by giving them all other proper advantages 
for acquiring the knowledge of their duty both to God and 
man. We are perfectly satisfied, that as it is incumbent 
on all Christians to communicate religious instruction to 
those Avho are under their authority, so the doing of this 
in the case before us, so far from operating, as some have 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAYERT. 105 

apprehended that it might, as an excitement to insubor- 
dination and insurrection, would, on the contrary, operate 
as the most powerful means for the prevention of those 
evils. 

" We enjoin it on all church sessions and presbyteries, 
under the care of this Assembly, to discountenance, and, 
as far as possible, to prevent, all cruelty of whatever kind 
in the treatment of slaves ] especially the cruelty of sepa- 
rating husband and wife, parents and children ; and that 
which consists in selling slaves to those who will either 
themselves deprive these unhappy people of the blessings of 
the gospel, or who will transport them to places where the 
gospel is not proclaimed, or where it is forbidden to slaves 
to attend upon its institutions. The manifest violation or 
disregard of the injunction here given, in its true spirit and 
intention, ought to be considered as just ground for the 
discipline and censures of the church. And if it shall 
ever happen that a Christian professor, in our communion, 
shall sell a slave Avho is also in communion and good stand- 
ing with our church, contrary to his or her will and inclina- 
tion, it ought immediately to claim the particular attention 
of the proper church judicature ; and unless there be such 
peculiar circumstances attending the case as can but sel- 
dom happen, it ought to be followed, without delay, by a 
suspension of the offender from all the privileges of the 
church, till he repent, and make all the reparation in his 
power to the injured party." 

Should the Old School General Assembly of the Pres- 
byterian Church, embracing as it does most of the south- 
ern Presbyterian churches, adopt at their next annual 
meeting such an expression as this of their views in 
regard to slavery, would not the country feel that a vast- 
ly important step had been taken, if not toward the 
abolition of slavery, at least toward such an ameliora- 
tion of it that it would soon cease to be an evil ? What 
more would the north ask for the first step in that direc- 
tion ? Rather, would not a somewhat general apprehen- 
sion be, that perhaps the Assembly had gone a little too 
far, and that greater caution, through fear of reaction, 
would have been advisable ? What ecclesiastical body 



106 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

at the north would or could now express a more deci' 
sive protest against the system ? Every thing looked 
like as speedy a removal of the evils of slavery as the 
imperfection of human society and the slow processes 
of reforming ancient customs allowed. This was not a 
mere ecclesiastical movement, nor an impulse of right 
feeling in the more zealous or fervent members of the 
community. In Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and 
Kentucky, public sentiment warranted and sustained 
this action. Jefferson's well-known protestations against 
slavery were not the voice of one crying in a wil- 
derness, but the exponent of extensive feeling on the 
subject. Washington had said, " It is among my first 
wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery may 
be abolished by law." Madison, a slaveholder, also said, 
" It is wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea of 
property in man." After the ordinance of 1787 had 
been passed, an interesting decision was made in Congress, 
which was like a refusal to re-consider, and a re-affirma- 
tion. Indiana, then a part of the North West Territo- 
ry, petitioned Congress for leave to hold slaves for a 
certain term. A committee, of which a southern slave- 
holder was chairman, reported against it, and the peti- 
tion was rejected.* 

A great change very soon came over the south. Re- 
monstrances from among themselves, legislative meas- 
ures, free, earnest discussions of slavery, all tending to 
its removal as soon as the best method could be deter- 
mined, were suddenly hushed. 

This phenomenon is strangely accounted for, on the 
part of many at the north, by saying that about this 

* Oration, July 4, 1854, by T. K. King, Esq., Providence, R. I. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 107 

time the cotton interest assumed very great importance, 
and the antislavery feeling at the south was therefore 
suppressed. 

He who believes this, makes an imputation which 
hardly does credit to his knowledge of human nature ; 
it certainly reflects too much upon the Christian char- 
acter of a community distinguished for intellectual and 
moral excellence. The names of some who were fore- 
most at that day in guiding public sentiment sufficiently 
refute this suspicion. Neither can it be shown that 
there were at that time those astounding revelations of 
the profitableness of cotton as would suggest the proba- 
bility of so great a change of views and feelings with 
regard to a moral question ; and as such, slavery spe- 
cially presented itself. 

The manner in which this change of feeling and ac- 
tion is now universally accounted for at the south sug- 
gests the more probable explanation. 

About that time people at the north were seized with 
deep convictions that American slavery was .a system of 
iniquity, and should forthwith be abolished ; that it was 
a sin per se to hold a fellow-being in bondage ; and that 
all sin should be immediately repented of and forsaken. 
Accordingly abolition societies were formed to effect the 
immediate emancipation of the slaves. Publications 
were scattered through the south whose direct tendency 
was to stir up insurrection among the colored people. 

A traveling agent of a northern society was arrested, 
and, on searching his trunk, there were found some 
prints, which might well have wrought, as they did, upon 
the feelings of the southern people. These prints were 
pictorial illustrations of the natural equality before God 
of all men, without distinction of color, and setting forth 



108 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

tlie liappy fruits of a universal acknowledgment of this 
truth, by exhibiting a white woman in no equivocal 
relations to a colored man. Incendiary sentiments and 
pictures had for some time made their appearance on 
northern handkerchiefs, for southern children and ser- 
vants. The old-fashioned, blue-paper wrappers of 
chocolate had within them some eminently suggestive 
emblems. When these amalgamation pictures were dis- 
covered, husbands and fathers at the south considered 
that whatever might be true of slavery as a system, 
self-defence, the protection of their households against a 
servile insurrection, was their first duty. Who can won- 
der that they broke into the post-office, and seized and 
burned abolition papers ; indeed, no excesses are sur- 
prising, in view of the perils to which they saw them- 
selves exposed. Then ensued those more stringent 
laws, so general now throughout the slaveholding States, 
forbidding the slaves to be publicly instructed. Those 
laws remain to the present day ; they are disregarded, 
indeed, to ^, very great extent, by the people themselves ; 
but they remain in order to be enforced against north- 
ern interference. 

Yet the paralyzing influence of the causes which led 
to such legislation continues. We wonder at it, and so 
do our southern friends. To the question why vari- 
ous things are not done to improve the condition of the 
blacks, the perpetual answer from men and women 
who seek no apology for indolence or cupidity is, " We 
are afraid of your abolitionists. Whoever moves for 
redress in any of these things is warned that he is 
playing into the hands of northern fanatics." They 
seem to be living in a state of self-defence, of self-pres- 
ervation, against the north. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 109 

The following commuuications to the New York 
Observer contain valuable information: — 

Jefferson Co., Va., February 13. 

Messrs. Editors : In answer to your request that some 
of your readers acquainted with the laws of Virginia would 
send you the truth of the matter relating to the teaching of 
slaves, I have referred to the Virginia code. In chapter 
198, entitled, Of Offences against Public Policy, section 31 
provides, — every assemblage of negroes. '•'■ for the purpose 
of instruction in reading and writing, or in the nighttime 
for any purpose, shall be an unlawful assembly." '• Any 
justice may issue his warrant to any ofhcer, or to any other 
person, requiring him to enter any place where such assem- 
blage may be, and seize any negro therein ; and he, or any 
other justice, may order any such negro to be punished 
with stripes." 

Section 32 is as follows : " If a white person assemble 
with negroes for the purpose of instructing them to read or 
write, or if he associates with them in an unlawful assembly^ 
he shall be confined in jail not exceeding six months, and 
fined not exceeding one hundred dollars ] and any justice 
may require him to enter into a recognizance, with suf- 
ficient security, to appear before the Circuit, County, or 
Corporation Court, of the county or corporation where the 
offence was committed, to answer therefor, and in the mean 
time to keep the peace and be of his good behavior." 

You will perceive that by the terms of this law a master 
or mistress is not forbidden to teach his or her own ser- 
vants to read. Such, I believe, is the general understanding 
in the State ; and it often happens that the young mem- 
bers of the family do teach the negroes in the family to 
read. 

This law was first passed in 1830 or 1831. 

A Virginia Lawyer. 

Messrs. Editors : In your paper of the 9th, information 
is asked from some one ^-acquainted with the laws of 
Virginia" on the subject of '■'■ teaching slaves.'^ I can fur- 
nish it in the simple recital of a historical fact. 

About five years ago, Dr. E., of A county, died, 

leaving, by will, all his slaves, some thirty-four in number, 
free, and appropriated fifty thousand dollars in bonds, well 
secured, for their personal benefit. They were to be kept 
on the plantation for five years, to be educated and pre- 
pared for freedom under the control and direction of the 



110 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

nephew of the testator, who was the executor of the will 
and residuary legatee. As agent of the Colonization 
Society, the subject came under my cognizance. The 
nephew was anxious to fulfill the important trust com- 
mitted to him, and proposed to petition the legislature to 
allow him to educate the slaves in letters. This led me to 
a personal and thorough investigation of the subject. I 
then learned from the highest authority, legal and political, 
that the statute on the subject allowed owners to teach 
their slaves m their own families^ but not to employ a 
schoolmaster for this purpose. Thus the law, somewhat 
equivocal in terms, has always been construed. The 
object of the law was not designed to control the liberality 
of the master in the matter, but to protect the country 
against a foreign influence by excluding irresponsible 
teachers. 

History contains few plots more appalling than some 
which were detected among the slaves just on the eve of 
being carried into effect. As northern zeal has pro- 
mulgated bolder sentiments with regard to the right and 
duty of slaves to steal, burn, and kill, in effecting their 
liberty, the south has intrenched itself by more vigor- 
ous laws and customs ; and it is not strange that in argu- 
ment also some positions should be taken which once 
would have found no defenders. Nothing forces itself 
more constantly upon the thoughts of a northerner at 
the south, who looks into the history and present state 
of slavery, than the vast injury which has resulted from 
northern interference. AYe sometimes speak of the 
black man, in his relation to the human family, as 
"Joseph," whom his brethren have sold into slavery. 
If the black man at the south is "Joseph," there are 
those at the north, who, with less violence to truth than to 
rhetorical correctness, may be called " Potiphar's wife," 
by whom " Joseph " has been put into deeper bondage ; 
" whose feet they hurt with fetters ; he was laid in irons." 
A pastor of a large colored church at the south writes 



A SOUTH-SIDE YIT:^Y OF SLAVERY. Ill 

to me, " Many of the higher class of citizens sustain me 
in my labors by their approval ; but many cherish, I fear, 
a latent suspicion of abolition, insurrection, &;c. Mean- 
while, I strive simply to preach Christ crucified." 

There are men at the south who maintain that so long 
as the existence of society there depends upon the sub- 
jection of the colored to the white race, it is better for 
the blacks to depend wholly on oral instruction. Taught 
to read, it is said, they will be unfitted for their servile 
condition, through the information which they will in 
many ways acquire. It has been said, for substance, by 
high authority, in the debates of a State convention at 
the south, " To make the slaves most useful to us, and 
most contented and happy, we must shut up some of the 
avenues by which knowledge would reach their minds. 
They can be taught orally every thing essential to sal- 
vation ; they can thus be made familiar with the word 
of God ; they can be intelligent Chi'istians, as we see 
many of them are, without reading." Those who say 
this will tell you that their philanthropy in this thing is 
wiser and better than yours, and that, after all, they give 
their slaves more instruction than white servants receive. 

Though this is not the common sentiment, it is never- 
theless fortified and defended by appeals made to the prin- 
ciples of self-preservation in southern citizens against 
the north. Were there entire kindness and confidence 
between the north and south on the subject of slavery, 
any attempt to shut up the Bible from the most unre- 
stricted use by the slaves would be overborne by Chris- 
tian benevolence. Nothing could prevent the slaves 
from being as generally instructed as the whites are 
where common schools do not prevail ; and where they 
do prevail, the slaves would indirectly partake of these 
8 



112 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

benefits. But if one thing is more obvious than an- 
other to a friendly northerner at the south, it is that 
northern interference is largely responsible for withhold- 
ing the Word of God from the hands of millions of souls 
in our land. A common and favorite name of some at 
the north, who are extremely and conscientiously inter- 
ested in the abolition of slavery, is, "friends of the 
slave." It would make some of them weep to see what 
a practical misnomer this is. 

Invariably, the answer to every question about teach- 
ing the slaves to read, from men who were not capable 
of excusing themselves from Christian duty, was, " If 
you will give us a chance to do something besides 
defending ourselves against northern agitators, we will 
satisfy every reasonable expectation on those points. 
While we are cursed, and threatened, and ecclesiastical 
bodies are making presentments of us before Heaven, 
and invoking divine vengeance upon us, and foreign 
people are stirred up against us, and we are irritated by 
having our colored people decoyed from us, and we 
know not who are lurking among us to excite insurrec- 
tions, how can we be expected to make progress in ref- 
ormations ? Grant that it is our plain duty to instruct 
the slaves in reading the Word of God in defiance of all 
danger. It is not in human nature to do its duty under 
compulsion from equals. When you say to a man, 
'You shall,' human nature says, 'I won't,' however 
just your demand may be. We at the south are no bet- 
ter naturally than you, and you would do as we do, if 
you were treated like us." 

Bad men at the south are furnished by some fonns of 
northern agitation, not only with excuses for their con- 
sciences, but with the short logic of retahation, to justify 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 113 

the hardships in slavery ; and there are enough of such 
men every where, loud and denunciatory, to exert great 
control in popular assemblies, where Christian meekness 
can not make its voice heard. Good men every where 
are apt to give way before the furious blasts of passion 
which come from such a quarter; and though they mourn 
over it, they say it is useless to resist, for such men 
get the popular ear, and stir up popular feeling against 
a good measure. Conservative men, even when in 
the majority, are disposed to yield when conscientious 
radicals oppose them ; and they submit to defeat by such 
men with a good grace, while radicals are apt to be 
factious and rebelHous if they can not have their own way. 
When a strong movement was made in one of the legis- 
latures at the south to raise the term of years within 
which a child should not be sold, something was indeed 
gained ; but one argument against the whole proposition 
was, " It is a concession to the abolitionists." The gen- 
tleman who drafted the act told me that the proposition 
to forbid the sale of a child under twelve or thirteen 
years of age was voted down under the influence of ap- 
peals and warnings, strange as they seem to us, against 
northern exultations. Now, a child five years old may, 
in that State, be sold and removed from its parents. We 
are verily guilty concerning our brother. Wisdom and 
kindness in a private individual lead him to refrain from 
exasperating even the unreasonable feelings of one who 
is believed to be in error ; to cease from aggravating 
prejudice and passion is commonly regarded as the most 
effectual way to promote a desirable object. This has 
not characterized our treatment of slavery and the 
south. Up to the present moment outrages are com- 
mitted in the name of freedom and humanity, which 



114 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

must result, if not checked, in a state of things which it 
is sad to contemplate. What community can long en- 
dure such assaults as these without resorting to retalia- 
tory measures leading to scenes of personal and section- 
al contest? Late papers tell us that, within a few 
weeks, — 

"A slave girl was taken from a railroad train at 
Salem, Columbiana county, Oliio, by force. She clung 
to her mistress, but was carried off by a large negro, 
who flourished a pistol amidst the applause of the spec- 
tators. Her master offered to go before an officer with 
her and execute free papers, leaving the girl to remain 
free or to go forth with him ; but the mob would not 
suffer it." 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 115 



CHAPTER X. 

WHAT SHALL WE DO? 

We have been most singularly foiled in our plans and 
purposes with regard to the removal of slavery from 
this country, and more recently with regard to its ex- 
tension beyond its old dominion. TVe have legislated 
and protested, prayed and preached, against the ex- 
tension of slavery, and this day it is more than ever 
lengthening its cords and strengthening its stakes. 

We have done that which we supposed to be our duty. 
We have walked according to the best hght that we 
could obtain. We have become educated to a more in- 
tense interest in the black man than in all the other races 
together ; and perhaps it is because God intends that we 
should have more to do on this continent with him than 
with any other race. 

What strange adversity has followed those who have 
been foremost in the antislavery cause ! The south was 
just on the eve of abolishing slavery ; the abolitionists 
arose, and put it back within its innermost intrenchments. 
We had succeeded, as we thought, in restricting slavery 
to its ancient limits, when the liberty party, by their well- 
known decisive influence in a presidential election, added 
that vast State of Texas to slave territory. 

By our antislavery agitation and its influence on the 
south, as we are told, she has simply acted in self- 



116 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

defence and has just succeeded in getting permission for 
slavery to extend itself into the new regions of our 
country. 

What is to be the end of this contest ? What shall 
we do? 

Section I. — Dissolution of the Union an Absurdity. 

" Let us peaceably dissolve the Union," is one answer. 
" Let us make a partition of our whole territory, and let 
slavery have undisturbed possession of its separate 
domain." 

A peaceable separation of the Union is an impossi- 
bility. Peace at the separation, or afterwards, will be 
looked for in vain. A peaceable dissolution of our plan- 
etary system might ahnost as well be expected. 

But allowing it to be possible, some thoughts and ques- 
tions naturally arise at such a proposition. 

Would slavery be diminished by this movement? 
Would the wrongs and woes of the black man be les- 
sened ? Clearly not, as a necessary result. 

" But we should wash our hands from all participation 
in them." 

This end of responsibility would no doubt be a sublime 
spectacle to some ; but there is an undefined and unsus- 
pected step connected with every thing sublime, which 
sometimes lands the actor at the foot of all his great- 
ness. 

If men's consciences and sensibilities are now disturbed 
so much at the " enormous wrongs of slavery," how 
would it be if tales of perpetual woe should reach them 
from that future prison ship, the southern confederacy, 
with its growing millions of slaves confined beneath the 



A SOUTH-SIDE YIETT OF SLAVERY. 117 

hatches ? If the slave trade has moved civilized nations 
to arm themselves against it, could our northern philan- 
thropists be quiet with a land of slavery festering, as 
they would suppose, with pollution and guilt ? 

Suppose that the slave trade should be revived by the 
south, at least through privateers from the south and 
north. "War would then cover the seas ; commerce 
would faint and fail. Fugitive slaves would be de- 
manded at the point of the bayonet, and armies would 
meet armies. 

The south, perhaps, would enter into a commercial 
treaty with Great Britain. Canada would then be closed, 
if not before, against fugitive slaves. The south would 
have its own tariif and ships. Our shij) builders would 
go where their business led them ; cotton would no less 
rule the world than now. A great impulse would be 
given to the planting interest. Manufactures go with 
commerce. The north would pay a good price for her 
virtuous abhorrence of evil, and look like a ghostly an- 
chorite, w^hile British capitahsts, descendants of Clarlvson 
and Wilberforce, (such is human nature,) would no doubt 
profit by our dissolution of partnership. 

This is one picture. Another is this. The Christian 
men and ^vomen at the south, relieved of all interference 
from the north, would begin the work of reforming every 
evil among them incident to slavery. Treaties with 
Great Britain would prevent slaves from fleeing to Can- 
ada, and the free States would reject them. The parti- 
tion of the Union would give the south more territory 
to be an outlet for their surplus black population. Laws 
w^ould be passed more humane to the slave than we ever 
dreamed of, and a great and flourishing community of 
Christianized black people would cover the slaveholding 



118 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

States. The American Colonization Society — the cliild 
of the south — would receive multitudes of emancipated 
negroes to Christianize and colonize Africa. Such have 
been the marvelous acts of divine grace to the Africans, 
;in bringing them, through the cupidity and sinfulness of 
men, to this country, and saving a great multitude of 
them, that it requires neither strong faith nor fancy to 
suppose that this work might still go on, in the form of 
interchange of the blacks between Africa and the South- 
ern States. The south has learned to be, and is fitted 
to be, the protector and friend of the African. The 
proportion of cruelty and wickedness due to human na- 
ture every where has been, of course, enacted there; 
but God is there, and his gospel, and his Spirit, and his 
elect ; and as sure as Christ is to reign through the earth, 
:the Christians at the south will vindicate themselves as 
the benefactors of the colored race. A great amount of 
?influence at the south is ready to assert its power in this 
direction as soon as the necessity of self-defence is taken 
.away by the restoration of sympathy and kindness on 
our part. Far better than to rend this Union into two 
Jiostile republics, or to let the south, by separating our- 
selves from her, accomplish by herself what might be 
her destined ministry toward the colored race, there is a 
way of peaceful agreement and of union to do an im- 
mense amount of good to the colored people, which we 
may reach if God will but hold us back awhile from 
our precipitancy. 

We had in 1850 three millions two hundred and four 
thousand three hundred and thirteen slaves in the United 
States, and in 1860 we shall have not far from nine hun- 
dred thousand more ; for their increase for the last ten 
years was at the rate of twenty-eight and eight tenths 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 119 

per centum. Thej cannot be emancipated to remain 
here. It would be to their misery and destruction. 

Section II. — Results to he expected from Emanci- 
pation. 

The conviction forced itself upon my mind at the 
south, that the most disastrous event to the colored 
people would be their emancipation to live on the same 
soil with the whites. 

The two distinct races could not live together except 
by the entire subordination of one to the other. Pro- 
tection is now extended to the blacks; their interests 
are the interests of the owners. But ceasing to be a 
protected class, they would fall a prey to avarice, suffer 
oppression and grievous wrongs, encounter the rivalry 
of white immigrants, which is an element in the question 
of emancipation here, and nowhere else. Antipathy to 
their color would not diminish, and being the feebler 
race, they would be subjected to great miseries. 

All history shows that two races of men approaching 
in any considerable degree to equality in numbers can 
not live together unless intermarriages take place.* 
The Sabine women prepared the way for the admission 
of the Sabines to Rome, and gave them a place among 
the conscript fathers. Alexander, having conquered 
Persia, married the Persian Roxana, and thus lessened 
the social distance between the new provinces and 
the original empire. Alaric, Clovis, Henry I. of 
England, in Italy, Gaul, and among the Saxons, re- 
spectively, resorted to the same policy of intermarriage 

* Carey's Domestic Slavery. 



120 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

for the same purpose. The long dissensions between 
the Normans and Saxons under William Duke of Nor- 
mandy and William Rufus disappeared when the two 
races followed the example of Henry. We know the 
happy results. 

On the other hand, Egypt and Israel, the Hebrew 
people and the nations conquered by them, the Span- 
iards and Moors, many modern nations and the Jews, 
prove the impossibility of two races living together un- 
less one race is dependent, or they intermarry. Like 
the Moors and the Jews, the blacks would eventually be 
driven out. Even now, in some places at the south 
the free blacks are prohibited by the laws of certain 
crafts, the stone cutter's for example, from lifting a tool 
in their work. White servants are exclusively employed 
in one of the largest hotels at the south. 

The fighting propensity of the lower class of the 
Irish would expose the blacks to constant broils through 
the rivalry of labor. The following is a specimen : — 

Irish and Negro Row in Buffalo. — There was a 
protracted and somewhat bloody fight yesterday afternoon, 
on the dock at the foot of Washington Street, between 
some negroes and Irishmen. The parties were about 
equal in point of numbers when the affair began ; but the 
Irish soon collected in great force, and considering it a 
free fight, counted themselves in, until poor Cuffee had 
not a ghost of a chance. Three of the negroes were bad- 
ly beaten, one of them to such an extent that it was sup- 
posed he must die; but he is better this morning, and will 
probably recover. Some six or eight of the combatants, 
black and white, were before the justice this morning, 
with a large number of witnesses to complicate the inves- 
tigation. It seems to have been a sort of spontaneous 
outbreak, without any other cause than the mutual jeal- 
ousy and dislike subsisting between the Celtic and Afri- 
can races. Before the police were able to suppress the 
row, something like a thousand persons had collected, be- 
sides those directly engaged in the affray. — Buffalo Ad- 
vertiser, June 5, 1854. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 121 

It would not be strange if, as the least evil, and to 
prevent their being exterminated, or driven out, as John 
Randolph's emancii^ated slaves and other companies of 
emancipated negroes have been, by one free State after 
another, or leading a wretched life like that of our New 
England Indians, it should be considered best for all 
concerned that they should enter again, after being 
emancipated, into some form of subordination to the 
whites. Their present bondage, with all its evils, real 
or supposed, it would then be seen, is by no means 
the worst condition into which they could fall. 

Their women would be debased without measure if 
set free. So far from being surprised at any degree 
of looseness in morals among the slaves, one can only 
feel grateful for the influences of religion and so much 
of public sentiment as prevail among them to keep so 
large a proportion of them virtuous, as, considering their 
temperament and their place in society, it is believed 
exists. But let them be thrown wholly upon their own 
resources for subsistence, or subjected to the idle life 
which they would be tempted to lead, and the probable 
consequence to the blacks and whites, and to their pos- 
terity, would be fearful. 

As an ardent friend of the colored race, I am com- 
pelled to believe that while they remam with us, sub- 
ordination in some form to a stronger race is absolutely 
necessary for their protection and best welfare — a subor- 
dination, however, which shall be for the interests of the 
black man, as well as for his superiors, and from which 
every degree of oppression shall be jDurged away, the 
idea of their being doomed as a race or caste being 
abolished, and individual tendencies and aptitudes being 
regarded. If our southern brethren will protect and 
provide for them for this world and the next, we, as 



122 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

friends of man, sliould feel that we owe them a debt of 
gratitude and should be willing to assist, if necessary, in 
promoting their welfare. 

Suppose, then, that we begin to take some new view 
of our duty with regard to slavery, having long enough, 
and uselessly, and injuriously enough beleaguered and 
battered it, only to find, in 1854, that, in spite of aU 
our efforts and prayers, it is taking a stride more vast 
and astonishing than ever. A physician who had failed 
in his course of treatment, as we have with slavery, 
would ordinarily change it. Perhaps we are wi'ong. 
If our aim is good, perhaps we can effect it in a better 
way — a way in which the south itself will cooperate 
with us. Perhaps this whole continent can be paci- 
fied on this subject consistently with truth and right- 
eousness, and to the increased happiness of all con- 
cerned. 

Section III. — Social Divisions deplored. 

May we see the day when, like mercy and truth, the 
north and south shall meet together, and righteousness 
and peace shall kiss each other. There is real respect 
for the north, and attachment to it, on the part of the 
south, when they are not reminded of differences of 
opinion about slavery. They earnestly covet our ad- 
vantages of education for their children, whom they 
would be glad to send here during some portion of 
their school days ; but non-intercourse, except for pur- 
poses of trade, greatly prevails. Teachers from the 
north are sometimes subject to the jealousies and un- 
kindness of those who, having no personal interest in 
their object as teachers, look upon them as spies, and 
deprecate the influence over young persons and ser- 



A SOUTH-SIDE YIEW OF SLAVERY. 123 

vants which the natural repugnance of these northern 
teachers to slavery may silently exert. 

The privileges of our sea-shore retreats, so highly 
prized by southerners, are not enjoyed by them as 
formerly. There are cases of real suffering in which 
many people at the south feel themselves debarred 
from our northern means of health and comfort. 

How sad it made me feel to see the great Baptist 
communion in our country divided by this slavery 
question; and when my soul was melted by the elo- 
quence of Methodist brethren preaching Jesus to the 
slaves, it was painful to think that the same plough- 
share had furrowed a deep line of separation between 
them and their northern friends ; nor could I without 
sorrow hear members of those Presbyterian churches of 
the south, which still prefer to cooperate with the 
American Board of missions, lament that the Board can 
not consistently send its agents into slave States to 
foster the spirit of missions. O thou enemy of God and 
man, what joy must it be to thee in this way, and by 
this means, to have rent asunder God's elect, prevent- 
ing them, too, from affectionate counsel and effort for 
the good of the African. 

What communion we used to have with southern 
friends here ! But now they feel and act as though 
accused of crime. Indeed every where in the south, 
where you get access to the hearts of the people, there 
is something like the sorrowful moaning of the sea, as 
though there had been, or would yet be, a great tempest. 

I felt that we had not treated the south as we would 
desire to be treated — as human nature requires to be 
treated ; that we had not spoken to her, or dealt with 
her, as we oucrht to have done. 



124 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

On what subject, except slavery, has the south ever 
divided from the north, in Congress or out of Congress, 
in war or peace ? 

What pride we have had in her patriots, statesmen, 
and scholars, and what fellowship with her sainted 
dead ! 

What a goodly land she possesses ; w^hat historical 
associations belong to her ; what resources of wealth are 
there ; what renown by sea and land ; in cabinets, at 
home and abroad! 

If the south should by any means obtain and keep 
the ascendency in our nationd councils, m what way 
would she have the power and disposition to conflict 
with northern interests, leaving the subject of slavery 
and our sensibilities out of the question ? 

With regard to what are called the encroachments of 
the slave power, the demands of the south, are they at 
all to our injury except as they offend our opinions and 
feelings on the subject of slavery? Political appoint- 
ments would be made with less of a sectional spirit if 
we were at peace. 

One would think that the south were Philip of Mace- 
don, and we at the north the states of Greece, judging 
from our philippics against her. But her great offence 
is, independently of every thing else, the perpetuation 
of an evil under which both of us were born, but which 
we at the north were enabled to remove ; an effort on 
the part of the south to defend and maintain her insti- 
tution of slavery under the constitution ; to maintain the 
right guarantied by our social compact, but assailed by 
us. We seem to have forgotten how the royal family 
of the mother country, the king and queen at the head, 
and many of the nobles, contributed toward the first 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 125 

importation of slaves from Africa to this country ; how 
Jefferson in bis first draught of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, charges the king with making depredations 
on an innocent people, and inflicting them as slaves on 
us ; and how, at the close of the war, we at the north 
lengthened out the importation of slaves to the south 
beyond the term voted for by a majority of the Southern 
States. Nor do we consider that the south was approx- 
imating the work of emancipation by public discussions, 
by acts of assembly drawn up and ready to be proposed, 
and by votes in her ecclesiastical bodies, when the out- 
break of northern opposition to slavery, and attempts to 
emancipate the slaves at once, drove back the south 
from her purpose, and that all her subsequent attempts 
at the extension of slavery have been intended as retal- 
iatory acts, or in self-defence. 

This is true up to the time of the Nebraska bill and 
the repeal of the Missouri compromise, measures capa- 
ble of no defence. The hitherto indomitable attach- 
ments of party are yielding to the stronger, the uncor- 
rupted sense of violated truth. The accumulating force 
of public opinion is sweeping down upon all who dare 
defend that disregard of those principles which every 
man needs for his protection. 

It is not yet time, but the day may not be distant, 
when, with sorrow over our vanquished opponent in this 
Nebraska measure, we shall begin to think whether we 
have not extended our retaliatory feelings too indiscrim- 
inately against southern men. For, after all, the peo- 
ple at the south generally took but httle interest in the 
Nebraska measure. I was in South Carolina when the 
news of the passage of the Nebraska bill arrived ; and 
it was received with almost no sensation, except where 



126 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

the struggle liacl been watched, and there the decision 
of course brought relief. But a very frequent expres- 
sion was, ' It is a great pity that our politicians should 
have stirred up this strife ; we were doing very well 
before; it will make trouble for us, and we shall gain 
nothing.' It deserves to be considered that poHticians 
at the south lead the people far more than with us. We 
have more popular assemblages ; public opinion is ascer- 
tained more readily, and is brought to bear more forci- 
bly upon public men here. Besides, at the south, the 
towering names and influence of a long succession of ac- 
complished statesmen have given the people more of ac- 
quiescence in their political leaders. Immigration and 
the general weakening of all political relationships are 
every where effecting a change in this respect. But 
should we punish the south for the acts of her politicians, 
for which, indeed, she must be held responsible, the peo- 
ple generally would not be conscious of having done any 
thing to deserve chastisement. 

Then with regard to some of those who at home ad- 
vocated the measure. While we look at it as extending 
a great curse over a territory dedicated to freedom, some 
of them, who are not influenced by political considera- 
tions, take no such view of slavery, but think of a plant- 
er removing to Nebraska with slaves, as of a Massachu- 
setts man removing to Rhode Island with his appren- 
tices. This does not extenuate their disregard of our 
feelings and opinions, but may serve to lower the tone 
of our retaliation as against the whole southern people. 

This breach of national faith is so remarkable that it 
places itself among those convulsions in the moral world 
which under God have prepared the way for great de- 
velopments in the destiny of a people. What good will 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVEEY. 127 

ever result from it, or what its evil consequences may 
be, human foresight cannot discover. If some great de- 
velopment of Providence with regard to the African 
race in connection with the American people were ap- 
proaching, we should connect the two things in our 
thoughts, and wait for the result. Let us think of this. 
We look at the Africans only as slaves ; God looks at 
them as immortal beings. We legislate about them as 
a basis of representation ; God plans for them as sub- 
jects of redeeming love. Our thoughts are absorbed by 
their sufferings in slavery; God contemplates them in a 
worse bondage, and would bring them into his family. 
If he has any further designs for the good of their race 
by our means, this beginning of a revelation, this open- 
ing of a seal, has taken place with as little violence, as, 
under the circumstances, we could have expected. 

Fraudulent as we declare the Nebraska measure to 
have been, yet considering the violent opposition to the 
fugitive shave law at the north, we can not wonder that 
southern politicians caught at it, when offered to them 
by northern men, as affording a defence to shivery at 
home against the north. What had the south done to 
injure us, except through our sensibilities on the subject 
of slavery ? What have we done to her, but admonish, 
threaten, and indict her before God, excommunicate 
her, stir up insurrection among her slaves, endanger her 
homes, make her Christians and ministers odious in 
other lands ? And now that she has availed herself of a 
northern measure for her defence, we are ready to move 
the country from its foundations. We ought to reflect, 
whether we have not been enforcing our moral senti- 
ments upon the south in offensive ways, so as to consti- 
tute that oppression which makes even a wise man mad. 
9 



128 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

All this time we have overlooked the intrinsic diffi- 
culties of the evil which the south has had to contend 
with ; have disagreed among ourselves about sin per se, 
and about the question of immediate or gradual eman- 
cipation, and yet have expected the south to be clear on 
these points, and to act promptly. Previous to her re- 
cent conduct, instead of being more passionate and re- 
vengeful under such treatment, it is rather to be wondered 
at that the gouth had conducted herself so well. What 
had she ever done, except in self-defence, in our long quar- 
rel, which, upon reconciUation, would rankle in our mem- 
ories, and make it hard for us to forgive and forget ? 
Positively, not one thing. We have been the assailants, 
she the mark ; we the prosecutors, she the defendant ; 
we the accusers, she the self-justifying respondent. 

Unless we choose to live in a state of perpetual war, 
we must prevent and punish all attempts to decoy slaves 
from their masters. Whatever our repugnance to sla- 
very may be, there is a law of the land, a Constitution, 
to which we must submit, or employ suitable means to 
change it. While it remains, all o)ir appeals to a 
"higher law" are fanaticism. 

Section IV. — Return to the Constitution. 

We must return to that simple provision in that 
Constitution which cemented our confederation. We 
must do this, or break up the compact. If enactments 
are necessary to enforce this provision, they must not 
trench upon other rights. They must especially guard 
every free man from having his liberty put in peril. The 
common gratuity of justice to every accused person — 
presumption of innocence — must be extended to the 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 129 

colored man under arrest. We must review our doings 
on this subject, and come to an agreement, by which the 
provisions of the Constitution shall be enforced with the 
least possible ground of objection. The north will never 
rest till some obnoxious features in the present fugitive 
slave law are changed. 

We are liable to imposition from colored men thi'ough 
strong sympathy for fugitive slaves. Cases are known 
in which the same set of papers has been used by differ- 
ent colored men to collect money. In a city of Mas- 
sachusetts, there were not long since, and probably are 
now, several hundred dollars, which a colored man, pre- 
tending to be a fugitive slave, had collected ; but being 
exposed, he has since been afraid to appear and claim 
the money, though he has employed various means to 
come into possession of it. 

We must not think that every fugitive slave is neces- 
sarily and properly the object of compassion, to be 
cherished and caressed; that his master is a proper 
object of aversion. Some at the north have sympa- 
thized with a fictitious being in the person of a fugitive 
slave. I will relate a case of deep interest, well known 
at the south, and representing other cases which in our 
zeal we overlook. 

A slave came to the door of a rich gentleman, an ex- 
cellent man, in a southern city, representing that, being 
in feeble health and unable therefore to do his master's 
work, he had obtained leave fi'om his master to become 
this gentleman's servant if he would buy him. The 
gentleman did not need him, but, from compassion, 
bought him, and favored him in his labor. Some time 
after, on going with his family to the north, he took this 
slave with him, chiefly because it would be for his health. 



130 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

While at the north, the servant came to him, and asked 
for money to buy some articles for his wife at home. He 
received some money, and that night deserted his mas- 
ter, and was brought before the court to have his free- 
dom effected by his friends. 

The master stated to the court that the servant was 
of hardly any value to him ; at present he was an ex- 
pence and burden ; and that he was perfectly willing 
to abandon him, though he expressed his opinion of such 
conduct on the part of the slave, and his apprehension 
that freedom would not prove to be his greatest bless- 
ing. He obtained his freedom. 

Had that slave fled to my house for refuge the even- 
ing that he left his master, and had I known all the cir- 
cumstances of his case, would I have done well to har- 
bor or countenance him ? 

" Certainly," replies one ; " to be owned as property by 
a fellow-being is a greater wrong than any theft, ingrati- 
tude, or unkindness, of which he may be guilty. I would 
dehver him from bondage, then reprove him, and let him 
suffer for his wrong doing." 

But for the conclusion of the story. When the mas- 
ter was returning to the south, the weak, sickly man 
came to him, and besought him to take him back. He 
protested that he had had enough of freedom, that he 
had been imposed upon by his friends, and that he 
should be miserable to be left behind. 

Should his master have yielded to his request ? 
" No," says one ; " he had no right to own a fellow-being 
as a slave ; not even to support him without any remu- 
neration, or to nurse him in sickness, or to pension him 
for life from his estate. Better, far better, to do right 
than to do kindly. Fiat justitia mat codum" 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 131 

The master at first declined to receive him, but final- 
ly referred him to the ladies of the family, through 
whose influence he obtained leave to go back. He was, 
however, told by his master to return to his " friends," 
and consult with them, and, if he concluded to go back 
to the south, to be on board the steamer by a certain 
hour. Early the next morning he secretly hired a car- 
riage and went on board, and is now at the south. 

All that I saw and heard has brought me to this con- 
clusion — that, in aiding a fugitive slave on his way to 
Canada, if at all, I must know whom I am helping, and 
for what reasons he has fled. I do not feel as I once 
did, that his fleeing from slavery is presumptive evi- 
dence that he ought to be assisted to escape. On his 
arrest he ought to be presumed to be free till he is 
proved to be a slave. "We must insist on this ; we have 
free colored citizens who otherwise may be kidnapped; 
but a fugitive slave may owe service to one who has re- 
deemed him, at his own request, from a bad master, or 
in other ways laid himself under obligations, which he 
violates in fleeing, as much as any fugitive debtor. A 
fugitive slave is not necessarily, nor as a matter of 
course, an object of compassion ; it is not certain that 
he has fled from a bad to a better condition ; that free- 
dom in Boston is invariably preferable to slavery in 
Charleston. 

"We of the free States are too apt to invest a slave, 
especially a fugitive, with an interest which may be 
overwrought ; to our eye he is the incarnation of injured 
innocence ; liberty, priceless liberty, is personated in 
him ; to have fled from a master at the south is incon- 
testable evidence, in our eyes, that he is a true man, con- 



132 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

tending for Heaven's boon, freedom, and in his proportion 
lie seems worthy of a place with patriots. 

All this seems humane and philanthropic ; it reads 
well ; in a speech it brings applause, in a sermon tears ; 
but now and then it is likely to be misplaced philan- 
thropy, the sheerest of romancing, and practically great 
unkindness to its object. There are colored men and 
women at the north and west who have fled from brutal 
treatment, such as would make any human being risk 
death in any shape to escape from it. Masters acknowl- 
edge this, and men who are guilty of the treatment re- 
ferred to are as much detested and avoided at the south 
as the bad members of any craft with us are by their 
fellows. Should a fugitive bring me proof that he was 
fleeing from certain planters whom I could name, my 
instinctive feeling would be the same as in pulling a 
shipmate away from a shark. Southerners would feel 
in the same way. No rule was ever made that could 
determine a man's duty in such cases. If we go to the 
Bible, we find, on the one hand, Hagar, sent back, not to 
Abraham, but to Sarai, her mistress, who had " dealt 
hardly with her ; " and she is told to " submit " herself 
" under her hands." Again : the Apostles are repeatedly 
set free from prison by divine interposition. Socrates 
refuses an opportunity to escape, and gives his reasons 
for remaining in prison and drinking the hemlock ; while 
a hundred cases in which good men have acted other- 
wise are not condemned by the voice of mankind. "We 
can not settle questions on this subject by a rule any 
more than we can give a rule for revolutions. There are 
some things, however, pertaining to this subject, which 
are clear. Our error at the north is in supposing that 
every fugitive must be presumed to be worthy of aid in 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 133 

effecting his escape. Romantic adventures, by women 
as well as men, in secreting and sending away safely a 
fugitive slave sometimes have the thrilling interest of the 
rescue of a child from a burning house, or from the 
waves ; when, perhaps, great injustice and unkindness 
have been perpetrated. Some children escaping from 
parents, some wives from husbands, would properly be 
protected and aided, the world over ; but we may as 
justly aid in every case of elopement, or get a voyage 
for every runaway boy, as help every fugitive slave. If 
called upon by a sheriff to aid in capturing a fugitive of 
any description, I have a right to decide whether I will 
not refuse, and abide the penalty of a refusal. 

Every man can abate a nuisance without waiting for 
a process of law ; but he must convince the court that it 
was a nuisance which would not admit of delay. If he 
proves this, he is justified. On this principle we may 
help any fugitive slave ; but we are held to answer 
before a higher law than that of man whether the 
circumstances justified us in setting aside or resisting the 
laws of the land. If not, though we may escape in hu- 
man courts, our sin against God, through his ordinance 
of government, remains. 

After we have said and done all which it is possible 
for human wisdom to do in making the recovery of 
slaves inoffensive, as things now are, there will remain 
in many the deep sectional difference of inborn feel- 
ings with regard to the whole subject ; and it can never 
cease, as now viewed by both sides, from being a source 
of disquietude, resulting in alienations and unnumbered 
private and public evils, unless we all agree to abide 
faithfully by the Constitution until it is changed. It 
offends our moral sense, we will suppose, to have a 



134 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

man who has tried to escape and be free, taken back 
to involuntary servitude. But there are other in- 
terests for moral sense to be concerned about besides 
those of a fugitive black man. Until we are sepa- 
rated from the south by dividing the Union, while we 
live under our present Constitution, our moral sense 
must be more intelligent and comprehensive. We may 
well be reminded that moral sense agreed in 1787, for 
the sake of certain objects which could not otherwise be 
accomplished, to suffer in silence, and let persons held to 
service and escaping be recovered. Now, to rouse our- 
selves up, and say it shall not be done, is treacherous. 
We have obtained the benefits of constitutional gov- 
ernment ; and shall we now repudiate the compro- 
mise by which they were gained? We may use all 
proper means to have slavery abolished ; but while it re- 
mains as it now is, we must submit to the recovery of 
fugitive slaves, or to anarchy, or to dissolution of the 
Union. All appeals to our feelings, on this subject, 
when the case of a fugitive slave is pending, are as really 
out of place, if the object be to hinder the process of 
law, as appeals against a sheriff's doings in attaching 
and selling private property. 

Can any one inform us Avhere northern moral sense 
was, or whether it was in the convention when the north 
protracted the slave trade eight years longer than the 
south wished to endure it ? If in the convention, it 
must have had leave of absence when the vote on that 
measure was taken. It is now very clamorous in every 
debate on slavery, and it ought to be called to order, 
being reminded that its silence or consent in 1787, works 
a forfeiture of all right of remonstrance now, at least 
till it has raised money enough to pay for three hundred 



A SOUTH-SIDE YIEVT OF SLAVERY. 135 

thousand slaves wliich are here in consequence of those 
eight years during which the slave trade was contin- 
ued by northern votes. 

When a slave has fled, and established himself in busi- 
ness here, and a family is rising around him, an attempt 
to force him back to slavery does violence to the feel- 
ings of every citizen. If a statute of limitations with 
regard to debts, libels, land titles, and other things, is 
founded on natural principles of justice, we may expect 
that when a better state of feeling exists between the 
north and south, we shall obtain a statute of limitations 
with regard to the recovery of slaves. Until that time, 
cases of a trying nature must be provided for in an 
amicable manner. It is easy to clamor about such cases, 
but it is wiser to treat them as we do other trials ; and 
these certainly are among the afflictions which are not 
reheved by violence. 

A distinguished advocate, defending a fugitive slave 
before a court, urged this as a reason v.hy the slave 
should not be given up — that he might be, or would be, 
sold by his master as soon as he should arriye in a south- 
ern State. 

This would be a proper and commendable motive in 
defending one not yet proved to be a slave; but if ui-ged 
as a reason why the slave, being proved such, should 
not be delivered to his master, it expresses, with all its 
kindness and tenderness, the principle of mob law. 
Soft and gentle, like thistle down it has a seed of evil 
for its centre. AYhat though the probability were that 
the slave would be sold at auction as soon as he could 
be taken over the boundary line of a slave State ? The 
Constitution of the United States must not be nullified 
in its fugitive slave provision for that rea^^on, unless we 



136 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

seek to make a revolution. We must go to work in 
another way to make things accord with our sense of 
justice ; and if that way be slow, it is the only way to 
prevent still greater evils. Until we divide the Union, 
or procure a change in the Constitution, if we resist one 
of its provisions from repugnance to it, and so nullify 
it, we make a breach in a dam which has behind it a 
desolating river. That lawyers should do or counsel 
this, not from professional necessity, but moved by 
their sensibilities, fills even some clergymen with sur- 
prise. Our clerical calling cherishes our sensibilities, 
makes them quick and impulsive ; but a lawyer is sup- 
posed to discriminate between what is specially benevo- 
lent and the obligations which we owe to the social com- 
pact: from him we expect to learn that an unlawful 
way of seeking a supposed good is fraught with a de- 
structive principle, before which every thing may be laid 
waste. That compassion for a fugitive slave which leads 
one to abrogate the constitution of society is not benev- 
olent, nor does it secure respect from any but radicals 
— a class of men, in all ages of the world, who have uni- 
formly failed to secure the confidence of mankind. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 137 



CHAPTER XI. 

NEW POSSIBLE ISSUES ON THE SUBJECT OF 
SLAVERY. 

And can there be no end to our division and strife 
with regard to this subject ? Ai'e we to spend the rest 
of this century debating it and contending over it? 
None can describe the vast harm which it has done to 
all our social relations. It has been the occasion of more 
unkind feelings and words, probably, than any other sub- 
ject ; it has alienated friends, divided great ecclesiastical 
communions, disturbed the peace of churches and par- 
ishes, led to the dismission of ministers, driven many 
into infidelity, embarrassed legislation, filled great sec- 
tions of the country with jealousy of each other, con- 
sumed the strength and zeal which were needed to rem- 
edy evils among ourselves, and, at the present time, is 
threatening us with greater mischief than ever before. 

The question which has hitherto absorbed our thoughts 
has been, " In what way shall slavery be disposed of 
consistently with the safety and interests of this nation?" 
This question seems as far as ever from a satisfactory 
answer. 

Perhaps it may not be long before different questions 
will be forced upon our attention, which, while they will 
gratify and satisfy the interest of good men in the sub- 
ject as moral and philanthropic questions, will unite us 



138 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

at tlie north, and also, hj the national relation of the 
subject, with the south. 

Let us then imagine for a few moments that the north 
and south, through some unforeseen harmonious influence, 
are actually losing all other thoughts upon this subject 
in their interest on this question, " What duties do the 
American people owe to the African race here and else- 
where ? " It is a question which the providence of God, 
in the remarkable history and continuance of slavery in 
this country, may have intended, from the beginning, to 
force upon our attention. 

We may be too impatient with regard to the con- 
tinuance of American slavery. Mingled with the sys- 
tem there are mitigatino; elements which we do not suf- 
ficiently consider ; but above and beyond this there are 
hoj)eful and even cheerful views of it for those who will 
connect it with their belief in the sure progress of hu- 
man redemption. The continuance to the present time 
of slavery, unprotected by old feudal institutions, but 
surrounded by the popular influences of such a land and 
such an age as this, its evident strength, its step ad- 
vancing against such powerful opposition, must awaken 
thoughtfuhiess in the minds of all who are disposed 
to reflection. Is this system to be utterly abolished? or 
can it be that in some form it is connected, in the mys- 
terious purposes of God, with his great plan of good will 
toward men, and especially toward the African race ? 
The contemplation of this question in a candid spirit 
will soothe our feelings and modify our views and 
measures with regard to this great national concern. 

Could this question, in some practical form, get pos- 
session of the public mind, it is evident that antagonism 
between the north and south, on the subject of slavery, 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 139 

would soon be destroyed. " The expulsive power of a 
new affection," as a theologian has expressed it, is constant- 
ly illustrated in change of personal habits and character, 
in love, in business, and religion ; attachments, seeming- 
ly invincible, to certain views, are at once and wholly 
destroyed by the entrance of a new master passion. 

Never can the instincts of people unused to slavery 
be overcome by argument; never can the most law- 
abiding, patriotic submission at the north to the recov- 
ery of slaves cease to be accompanied, in the minds of 
many, v/ith repugnance and distress, so long as they re- 
tain their present associations with slavery. On the 
other hand, a southerner, looking at the slaves from 
childhood, regarding the Constitution of the United 
States as the rule by which we are to be governed, 
can not appreciate our difficulties. Discussion may pro- 
ceed without end and in vain. No limit seems possible 
to disagreement on the subject of slavery ; claims 
founded upon it and resisted, irritating acts, and unkind, 
hostile words threaten to make the days of the years of 
the life of this nation, like those of Jacob, however pro- 
tracted, seem few and evil. Some great question is 
capable of so absorbing our minds as to have all the 
effect of agreement on the subject, by leading us to act 
efficiently, and on a large scale, for the welfare of the 
African race here and on the continent of Africa. 

The object is not to propose any way in which this 
may be effected, but merely to suggest the possibiUty of 
such relief God can arrest the career of our present 
thoughts and purposes on this subject by some surpris- 
ing event of his providence toward us or toward that 
people. His Spirit changes the views and feelings of 
individuals, makes entire revolutions in the opinions of 



140 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

whole communities, brings stillness and fear upon the 
hearts of men at the approach of divine judgments, fills 
multitudes with solemn religious impressions by means 
of some providential event. It is in his power to bring 
over the entire mind of this nation, agitated by the sub- 
ject of slavery, a calm like that of twilight ; he can 
make us drop our contentions and forget our differences 
by some influence of his, as at the curfew knell the 
Britons covered their fires. With men this is impossi- 
ble ; legislation, ecclesiastical censures, compromises, dis- 
cussions, political parties, can not do it ; but it can be 
done by Him in whose works, at the beginning, darkness 
preceded the light, and by whose appointment, in private 
experience and in great national histories, it is the same 
now as Avhen " the evening and the morning were the 
first day." 

It would not be a more surprising event than the de- 
velopment of the California enterprise within a few 
years past, if some development in Africa should draw 
attention to it in connection with the employment of 
portions of our colored people there. The possibility 
of this, and of many other ways of relief which will oc- 
cur to a reflecting mind, should help our faith and pa- 
tience. Instead of contending with one another, and en- 
dangering our future means of doing good to the colored 
race through impatience at present and temporary evils, 
necessary, in the providence of God, as it may prove, 
to prepare us all for his further benevolent purposes, let 
us endeavor to heal the breaches between us, and inter- 
change kind words and deeds. 

Africa is still, to a great extent, a land of bondage. 
Three millions and a quarter of her children are slaves 
in Brazil, nine hundi-ed thousand in the Spanish colonies, 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 141 

eighty-five thousand in the colonies of Holland, a hun- 
dred and forty thousand in European establishments in 
Africa, and over three milHons in the United States. 

Here, then, is a member of the human family whom 
God in his sovereignty has for five centuries suffered to 
bow its neck to other races. The susceptibility of these 
people to servitude should touch the hearts of their fel- 
low-men, and stir them up to defend and protect them. 
The reverse of this has been the history of their treat- 
ment ; but there is a day of redemption at hand ; they 
will see good according to the days in which they have 
seen evil. 

Amid all the tumultuous excitement on the subject of 
American slavery and the din of approacliing conflict, I 
cannot help looking at the south as the appointed pro- 
tectors of this feeble member of the human family. 
Brought to them indeed in transgression, and subjected 
to every injury, the importation of them protracted by 
northern votes eight years against the wishes of the 
south, the great law of human progress is nevertheless 
reaching them. Instead of regarding the south as hold- 
ing their fellow-men in cruel bondage, let us consider 
whether we may not think of them as the guardians, edu- 
cators, and saviors of the African race in this country. 
^ Only they who have been brought up with them from 
childhood are qualified, as a general thing, to succeed 
well in the care and management of them. The com- 
mon remark, that slaveholders from the free States are 
the worst masters, has/ honorable exceptions, owing to 
moral qualities in certain men which sustain them amidst 
great trials of patience ; to which trials, ordinarily, one 
must have been used from infancy, not to be intol- 
erant and severe toward the slaves. A man from New 



142 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

England, accustomed to have his orders obeyed promptly 
and with the faithfulness which self-interest dictates, finds 
it hard to bear the slack manner of that " eye service " 
against which an Apostle admonishes " servants." If 
we are to do further good to the African race in this 
country, we must be obliged to our southern brethren 
and sisters to do it for us. 

We frequently meet with the proposition to bring over 
Asiatic free laborers to supplant the Africans. If the 
object of this be to drive out slavery and the colored 
race with it, we shall gain nothing in the matter of races 
by taking the Asiatics in tlie place of the Africans, nor 
will the condition of the Asiatics here long be any more 
agreeable to them and to us than slavery now is. 

The revival of the trade in African negroes is men- 
tioned now and then at the south ; but it will be in time 
to discuss that scheme when it is seriously entertained 
by any Christian nation. 

Among the strange and extremely improbable things 
which are sometimes proposed, the voluntary immigra- 
tion of Africans to our southern regions, if any one could 
bring it about and make it acceptable to the south, would 
no doubt be for the good of that race. 

The immigration of Africans to the south would be 
better than that of cooUes, or any other new race, whilef* 
their labor might be equally cheap, being essentially 
free labor under strong regulations, and obviating the 
present enormous and increasing expense of buying the 
person of the colored man. It is by no means certain 
that some great change in the system of black labor, on 
account of the great prices demanded for slaves, will not 
be indispensable if the cotton interest in this country is 
to con inue. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 143 

It is only because it is hardly safe to deny that any 
thing is possible, that we say it may turn out, after all, 
as some suppose, that God has ordained us to receive 
the African race still more extensively for their benefit 
and ours, as we already are as an asylum to the op- 
pressed and poor of other lands. His plan seems to be, 
that suffering nations shall resort hither. As we give 
the wheat-growing districts to the Europeans, perhaps 
the tropical regions on this continent are to be the tem- 
porary abode of the African, from which he will go 
forth, as Moses did, to look upon his brethren and de- 
liver them. How they are to come, and whether they 
wiU be received, is not considered. 

We have reason to pause and wonder at the ill suc- 
cess, hitherto, of efforts to rid ourselves of the blacks ; 
and moreover the providence of God, the God of nature 
and the God of nations, with respect to that great staple 
of commerce, our cotton, is worthy of consideration. It 
is not unfrequently the case that the word cotton is 
made a byword ; it is spoken with a sneer ; it is cotton, 
we are told, that keeps three millions in bondage, and it 
is denounced as the foe of human liberty. Now, the 
great God that formed all things has seen fit to con- 
nect that single product with the comfort and happiness 
of a large portion of the earth, and by its connection 
with mercantile exchanges, being eighty-six per cent of 
all that is raised on the whole earth, it exerts a preemi- 
nent influence upon the world's commerce. The rainy 
season in the East Indies occurs at a part of the year 
which makes it impossible for that district of the earth 
to compete with us in the supply of this article ; we are 
appointed to this work; the south was about to free 
herself of her slaves ; northern interference, seeking to 
10 



14:4 A. SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

hasten the day, prevented it, perhaps forever ; and now 
we will not dispute with those who say that the south, 
and other portions of our land and continent, are, per- 
haps, to be the nursery of milhons more of Africans, for 
their present and eternal good, and for the increasing 
supi^ly of the world with a great necessary of life. 
Perhaps, in future, the failure of southern efforts at 
emancipation may be the occasion of unparalleled good 
to that race, by bringing us to unite in the only com- 
promise that will save us from ruin and them from pro- 
tracted misery. That which we do not know can not 
bring us much comfort ; yet we admit that, could we 
bring the slaves, every where, through our example and 
efforts, under the social and religious influences which 
many of the slaves at the south enjoy, it would be, in 
fact, breaking every yoke. At all events, let us look 
above sectional and political considerations. There is a 
stone cut out of the mountams without hands which is 
destined to fill the earth. Oppression will flee before 
it ; and whatever relation the colored man may sustain 
to the white man, it must be only such as will be for 
the benefit of both. We must not be prejudiced by our 
associations with the word slavery, but consider what 
the nature and influences of the relation designated by it 
are ; and if necessary hereafter, whether our brethren, the 
colored men, may not be related to us even more exten- 
sively than now, as dependent objects of a benevolence 
which this nation will be so fully prepared to render, 
in view of the wrongs and woes of which we have 
been the occasion. 

Then, the north and the south having a common aim 
with regard to the African race, every thing in the 
nature of oppressive laws made necessary by the self- 



A SOUTH-SIDE YIET7 OF SLAVERY. 145 

defence of one section of the country against the other, 
and all usages not approved by an enlightened and be- 
nevolent mind, will be done away. 

Then that cause of endless irritation and war, as 
things now are, escape from the south, will be harmoni- 
ously adjusted ; and it is impossible to see in what other 
way it ever can cease to divide and embroil us. 

Then the long-vexed question about the right of man 
to hold property in man will forever cease among us by 
our universal agreement to stand in the relation to the 
African as a stronger and more highly favored brother. 

Then our brethren and friends, those noble and brave 
spirits who emigrate from us to the new Territories, in- 
stead of rushing to shut the gates against slaveholding 
immigrants, will be relieved of all apprehension of con- 
flict by a general agreement what portions of our un- 
settled lands will be most favorable for the African race 
in connection with white men. 

Then this most perplexing subject, which irritates and 
divides us against each other at the north, and arrays 
the north and west against the south, will be taken out 
of the way. God hasten it in his time. 

We may yet thank and bless the south for being 
willing to continue her relation to the colored race ; it 
may yet seem to ns one of the greatest ilhistrations of 
divine wisdom in the affairs of men that she was pre- 
vented from throwing off the blacks. 

Some of these reflections may serve to nourish hope, 
keep us from desperation or despondency, make us for- 
bearing, and teach us to connect every thing in the 
affairs of the world with the beneficent plan of God 
and the sure law of human progress. No one can tell 
the result of this agitation on the subject of slavery ; 



146 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

but no one can consider its remarkable history and not 
feel that there may be some great design in it which 
will satisfy those who prefer the will of God to their 
own philosophy. 

If any of the foregoing new schemes which are now 
afloat for the Africans may be pronounced visionary, as 
they seem to be, it is a relief, at least, to have a slight 
variety in our fanaticism on this subject, which has been 
more fruitful of fanaticism than any other subject in 
our history. 

One thought only shall be added here. Past events 
teach us that this whole subject is a great deep ; and we 
have had sufficient admonition to be very humble and 
patient as to future disclosures in connection with it. 
He who insists upon any definite scheme with regard to 
the subject seems as sure to draw upon himself a just 
suspicion of unsoundness of mind as he who professes 
to have a key to Daniel or the Apocalypse. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 147 



CHAPTER XII. 

DISSUASIVE FROM INTERFERENCE "WITH THE 
SOUTH. 

The north must take the first step in pacifying the 
country on this subject ; and to some it will seem to be 
a backward step. 

AYe must begin to be " friends of the master," if we 
would be truly " friends of the slave." Our only way 
of benefiting the slave is through his master. 

Let us then think of that great body of Christian men 
at the south, who are perfectly competent to manage this 
subject, and meet their accountability to God without 
our help. 

The Presbyterian, the Methodist, the Baptist, the 
Episcopal ministry there are a goodly fellowship of 
men, who, if drawn up over against us northern minis- 
ters, would strike a feeling of diffidence in us, to say 
the least, with regard to any bold, hasty imputation of 
injustice, cruelty, or enormous wrong; men who know 
more than we can tell them about the evils of slavery ; 
who are incapable of being seduced or overawed by 
wickedness; and who are fully competent to struggle 
with the evils of the system, and to reform them, with- 
out one word of exhortation or advice from us; and 
whose daily prayer, with regard to us, is, that if there be 
any consolation in Christ, if any bowels of mercies, we 



148 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

would let tliem alone. Remember what they said and 
did before we drove them to personal self-defence. 
Mingle with them as friends, and not as antagonists ; 
hear them preach and pray; talk with them as you 
loiter in the woods, or ride, or sail ; and let them tell 
you, as they will be sure to do, all their burden on this 
subject, and compare it with what you see in the streets, 
and in families, and in all the unconstrained intercourse 
of society ; and you will be sure to feel that the greatest 
kindness which we at the north can bestow upon the 
slaves, is to be no longer the seeming enemies, the cen- 
sors, the civil and ecclesiastical judges of the masters. 

We must, therefore, change our manner and tone with 
regard to the south, and study ways to signify such a 
change. One expression of kind feeling, one frater- 
nal act on the part of the north toward the south, in 
exchange for the almost unremitted expressions of dis- 
pleasure with which she is addressed, would do much to 
restore a good understanding, not by its influence at the 
south, but by putting ourselves into a more suitable 
attitude. Any thing hke inviting the south to a com- 
promise on this subject, or obtaining from her a promise 
that certain things shall be done on certain conditions, is 
absurd. We must of our own selves correct the spirit 
and manner in which we have conducted toward her. 

Little things may involve great principles, and are 
connected with important effects ; and therefore the fol- 
lowing obvious illustration of what has now been said 
will not be considered trivial. 

There is one form of unkindness and hardship in- 
flicted on southerners, which, for the good effect the 
change would have upon ourselves, we shall do well to 
remove. 



A SOUTH-SIDE YIEW OF SLAVERY. 149 

We will suppose tliat a husband at the north is ad- 
vised to take his wife to the south for several months, 
to save, or at least, prolong life. She has a young and 
only child. There is a domestic in the family, between 
whom and the child there has been and is an attach- 
ment almost romantic, and in wdiom the parents place 
unlimited trust, wdio, besides her valuable services to the 
patient, will make the child happy, and so relieve the 
mother wholly of care. The privilege of taking such a 
domestic to a distant part of the country, under such 
circumstances, is beyond price. 

Now, there are husbands and wives at the south in 
corresponding circumstances. To spend the hot season 
on our seaboard, or at the water-cures, seems necessary 
to save life. They have a colored nurse, who is to 
them all that the domestic just mentioned is in her 
place; and no one could be more. The nurse knows 
no happiness compared with ministering to this family ; 
but she is in law a slave. A slave can not set foot in 
Massachusetts, for example, without being, by that act, 
free, and may go or come at pleasure. Were this family 
sure that no inducements would be offered to draw this 
nurse away from them clandestinely, they would take 
the risk of her deserting them. But to have a vigilance 
committee about their premises at the north, tampering, 
with the woman ; to miss their nurse suddenly wheu: 
their need may be sorest ; to follow the habeas corpus 
and the crowd to court ; and to be gazetted, and to see 
the happiness for life of an estimable servant put in 
jeopardy through some powerful temptation, or sudden 
indiscretion, induces them to forego the privilege of 
taking her with them, and either to endure the trouble 
and risk of obtaining a suitable nurse at the north, or 
to stay at home. 



150 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

It is easy to see that there is a large amount of incon- 
venience and suffering occasioned by such liabihties, 
which is not of course published, but to which northern- 
ers would submit with very poor grace. We desire to 
guard against the possibility of slavery being reestab- 
lished in Massachusetts, as might be the case if slaves 
were brought into the State to remain indefinitely, at the 
pleasure of the master or mistress. This self-defence we 
can not yield. But it seems hard if some good under- 
standing can not be had, to the effect that travelers from 
the south, visitors, are to be protected in the enjoyment of 
services rendered by members of their families, who, if 
left to themselves, would not exchange their condition, 
with its name slavery, for any thing under the name of 
freedom. Now, they must either stay at home or leave 
their favorite servants behind them — the skillful driver, 
the almost physician, who has dressed the chronic sore 
for months ; the maid, who is a rival with the mother in 
the child's love ; this must be foregone, because of our 
.practice of waylaying with the habeas corpus every 
colored servant from the south. 

Let our people be appealed to against this injustice 
and unkindness. Legislation can not well remedy the 
evil, especially if its only remedy be the poor donation 
of leave to stay a few weeks, and no more, with a slave 
at the north, as some of the free States have enacted. 
This concession makes visitors from the south feel that 
they are under obligations to us for that which ought not 
to be placed on the ground of permission. 

"Would that, for our own sakes, we could enjoy the 
pleasure more frequently of becoming acquainted with 
the citizens of the south in their domestic relations. 
We are becoming mutually repulsive, through northern 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 151 

jealousy and fear. Are we afraid that the sight of the 
happy relation subsisting between masters and their 
slaves will make our people in love with the institution ? 
Would that all could see instances of such relationships 
under this system. It would do much toward abolishing 
things objectionable in slavery, by making us discrimi- 
nating and just in our censure, if there should be need 
of any. It would do much toward satisfying us that the 
south is competent to manage this subject without our 
help. 

As a dissuasive from interference with the south with 
regard to slavery, it is deeply interesting to consider the 
impulses of their intelligent and good men in measures 
of rehef and kindness toward the colored people. 

Notwithstanding the powerful pressure from jealousy 
of northern interference with which these impulses are 
obliged to contend, philanthropy is working out benevo- 
lent plans for the slaves. 

Men at the south, in places of influence, whose opinions 
have a controlUng effect, are meditating the following 
changes, among others, in the slave code. 

One is, to raise the term of years within which no 
child shall be separated from its parents. The age pro- 
posed in the case to which I allude, and which would 
have been adopted by the legislature had it not been for 
some appeals with regard to northern interference, was 
thirteen. In that State, a child over five years of age 
may now be separated from its parents. 

Another proposition generally entertained is, to forbid 
the sale of a slave for debt. This would prevent, of 
course, a vast proportion of painful separations. It 
would greatly change the nature of slavery. 

Another proposition is, that slaves shall by law have 



152 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

a right of release from a cruel master, as provided for 
by slave codes of some other nations. 

In recent numbers of the New Orleans Crescent we 
find a series of articles in favor of giving the right of 
suffrage to the native free colored population. 

But the most interesting and important proposition 
which is discussed in some quarters is that of legalizing 
the marriage of slaves. There is a strong sentiment in 
favor of this measure. 

Surely there is progress in a right direction at the 
south ; and may we at the north but exercise wisdom 
and discretion, we shall soon see great changes in favor 
of the colored race. These changes have begun where 
slavery has felt the influence of the best state of society ; 
but they will in time reach the relation of master and 
slave in all the land. 

Let us grant for a moment all that the strongest advo- 
cates of the right and duty of intervention by the north 
with southern slavery have ever claimed. It shall be 
allowed that we are accountable to God for every 
oppression which exists in our slave States, and that 
our first duty, to which no claims at home, even, are 
superior, is, to see that this system of slavery is vir- 
tually abolished. What is the best way to accomplish 
the object ? 

We have tried one method for more than a quarter 
of a century. So long we have been practising upon 
our patient, and to-day the disease is extending more 
rapidly than ever. Some practitioners would, in such 
a case, have misgivings about the mode of treatment ; 
and we may well indulge a similar distrust. 

If the object be to subdue the south as a political 
enemy, and abridge her influence in the general govern- 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 153 

ment, the only way is to plot and counterplot against 
her by means of political organizations and party war- 
fare, and leave every thing to the fortunes of the war. 

But is it the sincere and kind desire of any to see 
the supposed wrongs and woes of the colored race 
redressed, and our system of slavery purged of every 
objectionable influence, and thus, if in no other way, to 
prevent it from further afflicting the white and black 
races ? Is this the form of our antislavery ? Does this 
express the substance of our abolitionism ? 

We are sitting down like an army before an impreg- 
nable wall, batteruig the gates and throwing bombs pro- 
miscuously into the place. A strong party within are 
in principle essentially with us, and, if suffered to exert 
their influence unmolested from without, would effect all 
that we desire. As it is, they are opposed to have their 
houses and lives destroyed by our indiscriminate shot, 
nor are they willing that we should march in and give 
laws. Therefore they combine with their civil opponents 
to resist their military assailants. Xever will they cease 
to resist and oppose us, not for our principles, but for our 
mode of enforcing them. If conquest be not our aim, 
or the gratification of malignant passions, but simply to 
have justice executed, our surest way to effect this is, 
to withdraw our forces, and leave the cause in the hands 
of those who but for us would long since have made their 
influence effectuah This will not prevent us from using 
all proper measures of simple self-defence. To do more 
than this, under existing circumstances, is to perpetuate 
the evil which we would see removed. 

There are many things in slavery which, as human 
beings, fellow-creatures with the slaves, we intensely 
desire to see abolished. Let no man say here, " Why 



154 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

take an interest in my servants ? " But if he says 
this, we will remind him of a well-known scene in a 
Roman theatre, where these words of a former slave, " I 
am a man, and nothing that pertains to man do I con- 
sider as not pertaining to me," brought down thunders 
of applause. We reciprocate, for all his fellow-servants 
and fellow-men every where, the noble sentiment of this 
slave ; nor would pagan Rome reprove us. Every week, 
events within the bounds of slavery make us cry out to 
know what can be done to prevent them. Tell us, friends 
and brethren at the south, what shall we at the north do, 
or cease to do, to help you prevent these enormities ? 
The last that came to the knowledge of some of us was 
a well-authenticated case, in which forty persons, de- 
scendants of a freed slave, some of whom had been free 
for thirty years, were to be reduced again to slavery, on 
the claim of one man. Can you do nothing to prevent 
such things? Can we help you, either by act or by 
silence ? Tell us if we have any duty whatever in the 
case. If it were the Greeks, or the Poles, or the starv- 
ing Irish, or the IMadiai, who were suffering these things, 
you and we would inquire at the capital whether, as a 
nation, we had no call to interfere. 

We do not wish to be contending against brethren and 
friends in a good cause. We can not desire to perpetuate, 
by our well-meant endeavors, the evils which you and 
we seek to remove. Who of you, then, will speak out, 
and, recognizing the evils to which we allude, show us 
our duty ? Be sure that your directions will be grate- 
fully received and honorably regarded. 

It is appalHng to think of a presidential campaign in 
which the subject of slavery, with its potent sway over 
human passions, shall be the aU-absorbing question. We 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 155 

are going into battle with conscience exalted to absolute 
monarchy and dictatorship ; conscience, under whose 
banner, in the name of God, wars, persecutions, tor- 
tures, and massacres have made the earth reel, and the 
blood of saints has reached to the horses' bridles. The 
destiny of unborn millions, as slaves or free, will excite 
one party beyond all foriner experience, and under the 
combined heat of conscience, humanity, fancy, sectional 
feehngs, fanaticism, and recollections of recent defeat in 
the Nebraska measure, even adamantine bonds will melt. 
On the other hand, domestic institutions, homes, the 
whole mysterious, complicated system of life, in one en- 
tire and united section of the country, will arm fifteen 
States of the Union with a desperation such as they only 
feel who are in the agony of a last hope. Let us not 
see that contest. " The shields of the earth belong unto 
the Lord." 

There is such a mixture of political and moral questions 
in this subject of slavery, that no one can tell by what 
motives men are influenced in their opposition. Some, 
whose thoughts and purposes are wholly political, never- 
theless make use of our sensibility to the moral relations 
of the subject, and complicate the bare question of the 
moral character of slavery with appointments to foreign 
political offices, and the customs, and post-offices. Thus 
they justly incur the opposition of the south by their in- 
vectives against slavery, when their chief objection to it 
is the influence which it exerts in the government. 
Could the subject become a simple moral question, and 
be discussed apart from politics, the jealousy and opposi- 
tion of the south would have far less excitement. The 
best thing which we at the north can do to pacify the 
country, to help the colored race, to prevent further 



156 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

Nebraska measures, and promote our common interests 
as a nation, is to reconsider our feelings and conduct in 
times past toward the south. A penitential state of 
mind becomes us. In that statesman's manual, the Bible, 
there is a joassage of history most pertment in its appli- 
cation to us at the north. The tribe of Benjamin had 
been guilty of an " enormous wrong " in the case of the 
Levite and his concubine. The other tribes assembled 
before God, prepared for war. Their question was, 
" Which of us shall go up first to the battle against Ben- 
jamin ? " Not, Shall we go up ? nor. In what way shall 
we best bring the offender to repentance ? 

The answer was in anger. Thrice Israel was smit- 
ten, and at last the offending tribe was defeated, with a 
slaughter on both sides, in the three battles, of sixty- 
five thousand men. Then the nation wept over the 
almost ruined tribe, and resorted twice to the stealing 
of women from neighboring people to repair it. 

So much for unwarrantable methods of redressing 
" enormous wrongs " in the bosom of a nation. 

Let it be repeated, we must not seek to obtain from 
the south any expression in the way of confession, or 
concession, or promise. "We are not properly a ruler 
or a judge over them, though we have assumed both 
offices. Let us adopt the principle that the south is 
competent to manage the subject of slavery, and straight- 
way cease from all offensive action. Proper defences 
for free colored citizens must be secured, and, if sought 
for, disconnected with the agitation of the subject of sla- 
very, as a political or sectional interest, can unquestion- 
ably be obtained. We must put a stop to the unlawful 
seizure of colored servants passing with their masters 
through a free State. We must in some way prevent 



A SOUTH-SIDE YIEW OF SLAVERY. 157 

the annoyance to wliicli southern travelers are exposed 
of having their colored servants enticed away, or 
brought before the courts to be emancipated. Perhaps 
these things, in connection with our whole manner of 
treating the south, have created a state of mind in which 
it was easy to violate compromises. 

Two things they do not ask nor expect of us, viz., to 
express any approbation of slavery, nor to sympathize 
with them. A northerner at the south soon perceives 
that, if he feels and shows in a pro})er manner a natural 
repugnance to slavery, they respect him for it, while 
they greatly susjject and distrust those from the north 
who seem in favor of the system. Moreover, any con- 
dolence with them at the evils of slavery, or show of in- 
terposition for their benefit, is wholly out of place. 

A slaveholder of liberal education and great influence 
at the south, and withal an extreme defender of the 
system of slavery, made a declaration, which, for many 
reasons, impressed me, perhaps, more than any thing 
which fell from the lips of a southerner. He said, " If 
the north had directed its strength against the evils of 
slavery instead of assailing it as a sin per se, it could 
not have survived to the present day." This is con- 
firmed by many witnesses, and may teach us wisdom in 
time to come. 

But our invectives against the south, our exaggerated 
representations of slavery, our indiscriminate imputations 
of connivance with its abuses, our political opposition, 
our resistance of southern rights under the Constitution, 
and our efforts to decoy the servants, at home and abroad, 
excite opposition which renders all our desire for the 
benefit of the colored race in this country entirely hope- 
less. VTe may drive the south and her slaves from the 
Union, but we thereby gain nothing for the slaves. 



158 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

INFLUENCE OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN AT HOME AND 
ABROAD. 

One thing which interested me at the south was the 
spirit in which Uncle Tom's Cabin was frequently men- 
tioned. Some of the warmest advocates of slavery said 
that they could parallel most of the abuses in slavery 
mentioned in the book out of their own knowledge ; 
and on speaking of some bad master, and wishing to 
express his tyrannical character and barbarous conduct, 
they would say. He is a real Legree ; or, He is worse 
than Legree. The book was mentioned with candor, 
and with little appearance of wounded sensibihty. Yet 
many criticisms were made upon it, both of a sectional 
and general nature. 

There was one criticism on the i3lan of the book 
which may be heard from every southerner, even from 
those among them who are antislavery men. The scene 
with which the book opens, they say, is unnatural. A 
gentleman embarrassed and constrained to sell a slave, 
and especially a child, would not act the part of Mr 
Shelby, in that conversation and drinking scene which 
are described in the first chapter. If, by the strangest 
combination of events, he should be led to do it, he would 
fling himself, with such a slave and child, into the hands 
of a trader, in the same state of mind with which he 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 159 

would surrender his wife's wardrobe, or her jewelry, in- 
herited from her mother; but to sit and laugh, and 
hold up the glass, and uncork a new bottle of wine, 
and peel an orange, and haggle with a fiend like Ha- 
ley, they say, is not according to human nature among 
slaveholders, in any man who had not himself become 
a fiend. But above all, to represent a southern gentle-, 
man, a man having " the appearance of a gentleman," 
"the arrangements of the house and the general air 
of the housekeeping indicating easy and even opulent 
circumstances," as suffering Haley to bid for such a 
woman as Eliza, with a view to her peculiar fitness for 
the New Orleans market, " slapping JVIr. Shelby on the 
shoulder," and coaxing him to let him have her for this 
purpose, it may well be conceived by honorable and 
virtuous gentlemen, is felt to be an affront by every 
decent man at the south — a coarse, broad, disgusting 
caricature, which, as a libel on a community, they say, 
hardly has a parallel. 

The tone of fairness with which the book is men- 
tioned at the south makes one feel that they have 
reasons in their consciousness for protesting as they do 
against this part of the book, or rather this part of its 
plan. The manner in which the criticism is made gives 
one a favorable and deep impression of the relation be- 
tween a master and a good slave ; it is not a mercenary 
relation. This impression is confirmed every day in the 
mind of a visitor, until, on reperusing the opening scene 
in Uncle Tom, he finds that the representation of a 
southerner with "the appearance of a gentleman, in 
easy and even opulent circumstances," in connection with 
the abominable talk and purposes of that scene, is an 
imposition and a cruel injustice. 
11 



160 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

While many things in the book are paralleled by 
characters and events at the south, and while the Key 
more than proves it, still, like all other novels, it de- 
ceives. At the north I partook fully in the general 
effect of the book uj)on our feelings, as the author knows 
full well ; but at the south, even after seeing or hearing 
jthings like many which are related in the story, I found 
that still the whole impression of the book on my mind 
was that of a falsehood. Perhaps this was in part my 
fault as a reader ; it is in part the fault of novel writing, 
its intrinsic evil. 

The first thing in which I found myself misled by the 
impressions to which I had yielded in the book, was 
with respect to the children of the slaves. I had fixed 
the image of Topsy in my mind as the exponent of col- 
ored children, and of Eva as their contrast. I supposed 
that generally a black child was, as Topsy said of her- 
self, " nothing but a nigger " in its own esteem and that 
of the whites. I expected to find in those black children 
imps, Shakspeare's Calibans and Flibbertigibbets, a pro- 
voking, disgusting brood. I was angry with myself to 
find how I had suffered poor Topsy to form my notions 
of childhood and youth among the slaves ; but I may be 
alone in the impression which she had the misfortune to 
give me of her race. I saw specimens of some, who, 
with a little change, in the hands of a fictitious writer, 
would answer forTopsys — girls as disagreeable and im- 
practicable as their prototype ; but they are the excep- 
tions ; there is such a class ; Topsy is a fact ; and this 
is all which the volume intended to say, and by no means 
to libel the whole rising generation among the slaves, 
by setting forth Topsy to represent them to the world. 
But notwithstanding the writer's good intentions, she did 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 161 

not, she could not limit the influence of her book upon 
the fancies and feelings of her readers. I found myself 
frequently stopping to talk with the black children, for 
the pleasure of hearing them talk, and secretly feeling 
also, that I owed them some atonement for the injustice 
which I had done to them in my thoughts. 

The next thing in which I found myself repenting of 
the impressions which, with no such design on the part 
of the writer, the book had given me, was with regard 
to the influence of slavery on female character. I did 
not suppose that Mrs. St. Clair was a true picture of 
southern women, for I knew better ; at the same time, 
when I saw the women of the south in their families, on 
their plantations, in their Sabbath schools, and heard 
them speak of their servants, and found them making 
the garments worn by field hands, superintending the 
distribution of food, nursing tjie sick, and enduring toils 
for them to which northern ladies are generally stran- 
gers, I felt that that miserable woman was out of place in 
any prominent connection with descriptions of southern 
character. Many, of course, were the instances in which 
a character illustrating the entirely opposite effects of 
slaveholding upon the women of the south occurred to 
me, and so had they done to the narrator of Mrs. St. 
Clair's biography ; all that I would say is, I wondered 
that such a woman should have been permitted to be 
the prominent figure among her sex in the antislavery 
romance. The writer's object was by no means to de- 
scribe southern women ; no one more than she would 
deplore unjust impressions with regard to them derived 
from her writings ; yet one who has received the natural 
impression of the book will find at the south that he dis- 
likes Mrs. St. Clair, for new reasons, more than ever. 



162 SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

And then, as a whole, I found that the book gives a 
northerner false conceptions of the actual state of 
things at the south, not excepting abuses in slavery ; for 
with respect even to them, after reading the book, appari- 
tions will be ever present to one's thoughts, which will 
not be laid except by going south. There he sees that 
many things referred to can and may take place ; but 
if he has taken the book into his mind almost' as a trav- 
eler in the East takes the book of Joshua, if he expects 
frequently or necessarily to pattern after the book in 
his observations, he will be displeased with himself 
more than with the writer at his mistake. 

By using any simile to illustrate what has now been 
said, there is danger of doing to the reader what the 
book in question does to us. But it occurred to me 
that Uncle Tom's Cabin was in some sense like a solar 
microscope applied to vinegar. Fearful are the sights 
thus revealed in that liquid. Lizards, ichthyosaurians, 
and megalatheria in general, are there without number ; 
and the impression is, that the element in which they 
live is appropriate to their dispositions, for they are evi- 
dently carrying on an internecine war. Are not those 
things there ? will you dispute the evidence of sight ? 
is it not the essential nature of vinegar to generate such 
things ? and will you ever taste a drop of vinegar here- 
after ? This simile is capable of great perversion and 
abuse ; and so is the author's design in the Cabin. 

The truth is, the writer of Uncle Tom's Cabin is not 
only the foe, but the Defoe, of slavery, and Uncle Tom 
is the Robinson Crusoe of involuntary servitude. Now, 
if people, as far as possible from the seaboard, should 
ask me for a book giving a true picture of a sailor's 
experience, it would be as fair to give them Robinson 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 163 

Crusoe as to put Uncle Tom's Cabin into the hands of a 
foreigner who wished to learn what American slavery ac- 
tually is. Robinson Crusoe is all probable, has all been 
verified ; but the journals of our merchantmen do not 
ordinarily coiTespond with the experiences of that book, 
and still every crew, in every voyage, is liable to verify 
it for substance, in every part of the earth. 

Having written the foregoing at the south, I was 
much interested a week or two afterwards, on receiving 
the Boston Daily Advertiser, in meeting with the fol- 
lowing coincidence of opinion and expression in an 
article by one of the respected editors of that paper, 
being a notice of an article in the North American 
Review for April, on Robinson Crusoe : — 

'•' Robinson Crusoe has a peculiar interest to American 
students, because properly an American novel, written by 
a Puritan, with its locaHty, scenery, and moral all strictly 
American. It is worth remark that the play Shakspeare 
is said to have valued most was the Tempest, whose 
scenery is all American also. The greatest English ro- 
mance and the greatest English drama are ours, the first 
fruits of the new world to English literature. 

" We are tempted to add. as a suggestion to his next re- 
viewer, that Robinson Crusoe, and the only other English 
romance which has ever attained an equal popular circu- 
lation, — both novels of American life, — illustrate together 
the vanity of 'the argument from invented example/' or 
rather the ease with which fiction may be turned to sup- 
port either side of a moral question. 

"Uncle Tom"s Cabin — the only romance which has 
gained a popular circulation equal to Robinson Crusoe — 
is the history of a slave, written to expose, and wonder- 
fully successful in exposing, the horrors of the slave 
system. Robinson Crusoe, on the other hand, whom every 
reader loves, was a slave trader, shipwrecked on a voy- 
age to the Guinea coast for slaves, which he never re- 
gretted for its wickedness ; and one of the features of his 
life for which certainly he is least blamed, is his holding 



164 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

Friday, whom he has preserved {servus quia servatus erat) 
as his slave. The Christian slave Uncle Tom and the 
Christian slaveholder Robinson Crusoe are the tw^o most 
popular heroes of English romance. So little is really 
proved by the argument from invented example." 

Let us imagine an intelligent community in Southern 
India, where custom, we will suppose, had for gen- 
erations forbidden widowers with children to marry. 
The proposition being made to set aside this custom, 
some, who are still in favor of the prohibition, cause 
to be translated and circulated a book written in Amer- 
ica called the Stepmother. It is a novel. The author 
having been deeply affected by the acknowledged mis- 
ery resulting in very many cases, from the injustice 
and cruelty of stepmothers, constructs a most thrilling 
tale, which makes more weeping than any book of 
its time. Objections having been made to the repre- 
sentations in the book, the author gives a Key in 
which she prints authentic letters detailing scenes of 
exquisite domestic misery in consequence of second 
marriages. Her novel is most fully sustained by these 
cases ; and indeed the one half has not been told. 

Perhaps the nucleus of the story was furnished by a 
transaction which we all know to be true, and which at 
the time made a sensation that needed no aid from 
fancy. An adopted boy told his father of some impro- 
prieties which he had accidentally witnessed in his step- 
dame in connection with a gentleman. The wife denied 
it, and required that the boy be whipped for falsehood. 
The father was deacon of a church. He whipped the 
little fellow till a pool of blood stood at his feet, the child 
protesting his innocence and trutlifulness ; and with his 
dying accents, (for he died,) after saying, " I feel cold," 
as the chill of death came over him, he said, " Dear 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 165 

father, I love you." The two parents were at the last 
accounts in jail awaiting their trial. I give the nar- 
rative from memory ; a fictitious case would serve my 
purpose, but this appeared in an authentic manner 
not long since in the papers. The writer of the fiction 
which we are supposing would need to alter this case so 
far as to call this adopted child an own child of this 
father, and the woman a stepmother. But, for the vast 
good which was meant to be accomplished, how few fic- 
titious writers would consider it wrong to make even so 
essential an alteration ! 

No fictitious narrative of slavery or piracy could 
make a deeper impression than a book on this subject 
written by a female hand which knew well how to touch 
the chords of the human heart, especially if there were 
interspersed skillful representations of the unnaturalness 
of second love, of the impossibility that maternal affec- 
tion should be imitated, and that where a stepmother has 
children of her own, there is the strongest temptation to 
partiality, with other theoretically truthful things which 
a woman of genius would know so well how to set forth. 
The book, then, is published in India. 

Should visitors in India from America be reproached 
with this picture of domestic life in second marriages, 
and should they complain that it is unjust, every mouth 
could be stopped by the question, " Is there a word in 
the book which is not true ? Do you deny the facts ? " 

It would all be true ; but the common law adage 
would apply, in a sense different, it is true, from its in- 
tended meaning, " The greater the truth, the greater the 
libel." 

Husbands and fathers who have found for their moth- 



166 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

partial, generous love for their stepchildren approaches 
nearer than any thing else on earth to the ministry of 
angels, must feel that such a book, with all its candid 
and fair protestations in favor of the many exceptions 
to the general rule of the unnaturalness of second mar- 
riages and second mothers, would make a false impres- 
sion in a country where the whole truth could not be 
known, the necessity of second marriages be appreciated, 
and the incidental evils of the relation in question, and 
its abuses, be distinguished from its normal operation 
under moral and Christian principle. 

How natural and kind it would be for the women of 
India, led by that accomplished woman, the lady Rajah 
Seringapatam, to join in an address to the stepmothers 
of the United States, deploring the existence of such 
enormous wrongs, and remonstrating with their Christian 
sisters ! If the burning of widows on the same funeral 
piles with the bodies of their husbands were at the date 
of the address still practised, the sympathy of those East 
Indian women with our domestic histories would be bet- 
ter appreciated, especially if the suttees should be passed 
over with but a slight allusion. 

Now, it is not necessary to my argument that this case 
should be shown to be parallel with slaveholding and 
with a book written to show the evils of slavery. The 
only point of the illustration (and let nothing else be 
confounded with it) is this — that the truth, fairly, dis- 
criminatingly, kindly spoken, and confirmed by more 
than sufficient cases, the truth itself may operate most 
cruelly if presented in the form of fictitious narrative. 
This is an illustration, to those who wish to use it, of the 
pernicious influence of novels. We can not describe a 
character or class of men in any place without imprint- 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 167 

ing almost the whole surface of a reader's mind with 
the image of the persons described, so as to fill his vision 
whenever he hears of or sees that place. Not to seem 
like laying blame on the writer of the book in question 
as a sinner above all others, but rather to comfort her in 
view of the harm she has done, by a somewhat flattering 
illustration, it may be observed that, passing through 
Coventry, England, I was sure that I saw survivors of 
Falstaif 's ragged regiment ; and whoever has read 
Shakspeare will find them there to-day. One man, in 
particular, stood as a specimen of them in the public 
square, at six o'clock in the morning, in the position of 
erect and somewhat opened dividers, his hands in his 
pockets, liis coat torn under the right shoulder behind. 
I made no question that he was a survivor of his regi- 
ment. " I'll not march through Coventry with them," 
said Falstaff. But I could not help thinking that he 
did, and that some of them had never left the place. 
That ancient regiment, and Siiakspeare, and " Peeping 
Tom," are no more to blame for our having fcAV other 
thoughts at first in Coventry except those which are lu- 
dicrous, than are the Haleys and their inventor, and 
" Uncle Tom," for making us project the images of those 
characters all about us at first in the slaveholding States. 

While we confine the influence of this imagination to 
our private thoughts, the practical evil, of course, is 
limited, though it is an evil ; for it is not the truth ; it is 
not the case as it exists. 

But when this wrong impression, innocently made, 
instead of beino; left like a fugitive water color, becomes 
like a water color which is rolled over with a chemical 
preparation to sink and fix it ; when a romance is followed 
by a book of facts to prove the tale, and this originally 



168 A SOUTII-SIDE YIEW OF SLAVERY. 

wrong impression becomes an exasperated conviction 
leading us to take counsel and revolutionize a country, 
to exscind whole communities, to fill the air over their 
heads with imprecations to Heaven for vengeance upon 
them — it behooves us to pause and see whether our 
premises are true ; whether other things equally true do 
not so modify the case, as presented in the novel, that 
the fiction becomes false and injurious. With all my 
feelings in favor of the work referred to, and against 
our system of slavery, on going to the south as a place of 
refuge in sickness with no purpose to become in any 
wise interested in the subject of slavery, but rather 
studying how to defend myself against the impressions 
which I suj)posed it would make upon me, I found my- 
self, for three months, in a state of society, in different 
places, which made me say, " If Uncle Tom's Cabin is 
true, there are other things just as true which ought to 
modify every judgment of slavery as dictated by that 
book." 

The reply to this is, " You saw the best specimens of 
slaveholding." Truly, I did ; and gave thanks for the 
power of the gospel in its direct and indirect influences 
upon the master and slave. I took courage in thinking 
what that gospel would continue to do there, if " the 
wrath of man " could only be taught that it " worketh 
not the righteousness of God." But if the remark im- 
plies that I did not see and feel the evils of slavery, some 
of the preceding pages, I trust, are a suflBcient answer. 

Indignity to the human person, meek sufferings under 
cruelty, woman in the power of a brutal nature, child- 
hood's innocence and simjDlicity, maternal instincts, the 
pathetic themes of redemption, with interchanges of 
drollery and brogue, that stroke of art to keep the sol- 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 169 

emn and pathetic from palling upon the mind, and the 
didactic from seeming prosy, — these, combined by the 
hand of genius into a novel to make southern slavery 
abhorred, create an impression against the south itself 
which many can not see and feel to be in a most im- 
portant sense, and to a great extent, unjust, till they 
mingle with the masters and servants. Had I read a 
novel designed to eulogize and commend the system, 
written with the power of this book, my disappointment 
and revulsion in another direction would have been no 
less real, though producing a different effect upon my 
feelings. 

This book has entered like an alcoholic distillation 
into the veins and blood of very many people in the free 
States. They did not, nor do they now, make any dis- 
tinction between Red River and any other river, south, 
or south-west ; nor did the author mean that they should, 
for the Key applies the whole power of the book against 
slavery in all the south, and brings facts from the 
Southern States generally to corroborate the fiction. 

At the south its effect is more secret. There are in- 
juries which pride forbids men to retaliate at a time or 
in a way which will show that they are capable of being 
offended by them. In the secret places of the heart, 
the smothered fire slowly generates heat, Avhich makes 
combustion fierce when the flame kindles. This book 
has had much to do with preparing a state of feeling at 
the south by Avhich Nebraska measures are more will- 
ingly sustained. Yet most southerners would scorn the 
thought of being offended or influenced from such a 
source.* 

* It will illustrate this topic to speak of Rev. Dr. Perkins's ser- 
mon preached at Oroomiah, Persia, entitled " Our Country's Sin." 



170 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OP SLAVERY. 

But what impression must the book have made on 
foreign nations, was a question which occurred to me, 
if its impression on an American be thus false ? What 
ideas must Frenchmen, and the Swiss, and Germans, 
and the converts from heathenism and paganism, have 
of our southern men universally, if, for example, Topsy 
gave me such impressions respecting the slave children 
as a race of chimney sweeps ? 

This question had ceased to interest me, for I had 
concluded that my own impressibility was in aome way 
wrong, and that no one else would fall into the same 
eiTor. 

On looking at " Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands," 

Private letters frona abroad inform us that it was written under the 
influence of the Cabin. A word of personal explanation will be 
excused. Dr. Perkins quotes from a sermon of mine on Mr. Web- 
ster the words, " Let the land have a Sabbath on this subject, (sla- 
very,) and let this Sabbath be the long, long days of our mourning," 
&c., and he devotes some space, and uses strong language, in la- 
menting and reproving the idea of keeping " a Sabbath silence " 
with regard to slavery. My previous sentence would seem to make 
this meaning of my language improbable: " And now, as we sail 
away from the sea-girt tomb of our pilot, let us all agree, north, 
south, east, and west, to throw into the waves, as a sacrifice, our un- 
kind feelings and bitter Avords on the subject of American slavery. 
Let the land have a Sabbath with regard to this subject," — mean- 
ing, and no doubt I should have added these words, as thus dis- 
ciissed ; the idea of silence on this or any other great moral question 
being foreign from my thoughts. The blame of this sermon must 
not be laid at the door of that far-off mission home, with its priva- 
tions and sorrows, but at the door of the Cabin, which led a mis- 
sionary of the cross to employ the sacramental occasion to pour out 
his excruciated feelings to his little company of exiled brethren in 
reproof of pastors and religious editors here at home, whose chief, 
if not their only regret at the sermon, is the pain which it must 
have cost him to write and preach it. We are not offended. We 
can not, indeed, call his smiting of us " excellent oil," yet, like such 
oil, it has not broken our heads. 



A SOL'TH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY, 171 

I came to this passage in tlie author's account of what 
she saw and heard in Geneva, Switzerland, at Castle 
Chillon : — 



'' After we left the dungeons, we went up into the judg- 
ment hall, where prisoners were tried, and then into the 
torture chamber. Here are pulleys by which limbs were 
broken ; the beam, all scorched with the irons by which 
feet were burned; the oven where the irons were heated; 
and there was the stone where they were sometimes laid to 
be strangled after the torture. On that stone, our guide 
told us. two thousand Jews, men, women, and children, had 
been put to death. There was also, high up, a strong 
beam across, where criminals were hung, and a door, now 
walled up, by which they were thrown into the lake. I 
shivered. ' "Twas cruel,' she [the guide] said; "twas 
almost as cruel as your slavery in America.' " 

'• Then she took us into a tower," &c. — Vol. ii. pp. 
273. 274. 



Here I found that my false impressions with regard 
to slavery, made by reading the Cabin were proba- 
bly not peculiar, and that, without doubt, unjust impres- 
sions have been given by the book to millions of foreign 
people. The torments of Chillon Castle, organized, 
administered religiously, scientifically, and with that 
diabolical cruelty in which passion has given place to 
stolid indifference, these are, in. the view of a Swiss 
reader of the Cabin, " almost as cruel as your slavery 
in America." No rebuke, no correction is given. And 
all this time that the book is making these impressions 
with regard to the slaves, those slaves, notwithstanding 
the inherent evils and liabilities of their state, surpass 
any three millions of laboring people, in any foreign 
land, in comforts, in freedom from care, in provision for 
the future, in religious privileges and enjoyment, and 
probably send tenfold more from their number to be in 
heaven kings and priests to God. 



172 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

In view of the injury inflicted on the south by this 
novel in the ojDinions and feelings of humane people 
all over the earth, the meekness and kindness with which 
it has been privately spoken of by many southerners 
awaken sympathy and love toward them, which, though 
slow, may one day overtake the injustice, and make com- 
pensatory reaction. 

Many things in the book are specifically true ; it 
has afforded an inestimable amount of pleasure; the 
author has been placed by it in situations of rich enjoy- 
ment, for which every generous mind is glad : and now 
we wish that the same genius might be employed in 
doing justice to private characters at the south, to the 
benevolent effects, in the providence of God, and the 
possible prospective relations, of slavery — slavery as it 
really is — slavery as it may be. 

But the genius that dictated the Cabin would fail 
here. There would be no bad passions to be stimulated ; 
hatred of the south would not be stirred; the self- 
righteousness of foreign people would be disturbed by 
the dark shade into which the bright side of slavery 
would throw their laboring poor. No political party, 
no rival religious publication societies, would get any 
help from it ; certain aspirants for the presidency would, 
by its influence, see their prospects as in the light of a 
waning moon. Some would even burn the book on their 
platform with the Constitution of the United States. In- 
fidels and atheists, who every year in May drink to- 
gether the Circean cup of radicalism, would tramj^le her 
book under their feet, and turn again and rend her. 
How she would use her well-known facility in quoting 
Scripture then : " My soul is among lions ; and I lie even 
among them that are set on fire, whose teeth are spears 
and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword." 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 173 

The book will Lave the effect to make slaveholders, 
m many mstances, feel the vast responsibleness which 
rests u^^on them to render to their servants that which 
is just and equal, knowing that they also have a Master 
in heaven, and that the world looks on to see how they 
use a trust by which they can do more good or more 
harm directly to a human being than in any other rela- 
tion except that of a parent. 

Now that we are upon this subject, something may be 
said, perhaps to good effect, — as certainly it is dictated by 
kind feelings in which personal attachments also mingle, 
— with regard to the manner in which the south and our 
country are spoken of, through the influence of northern 
hostility to slavery, not only by Americans, but by for- 
eigners. Southerners have need of patience in view of 
the manner in which they are commonly spoken of by 
many. There is a saucy way of talking about slave- 
holders, a slurring manner of alluding to them in the 
style of byword, which ought to be reproved. The book 
already quoted. Sunny Memories, &c.,* affords an illus- 
tration of this in the Journal of the author's brother, who 
may as well be quoted for a casual example as any man, 
and who knows how to answer for himself. He is de- 
scribing his altercation with a mule which had suddenly 
refused to move ; he stones him in tliree distinct pitched 
onsets, each graphically described, and we hope in an 
exaggerated manner ; for, had some southern gentle- 
men been passing by, they would have said, ' Were you 
a passionate negro, we should re[)rove you ; but being 
one of the prominent exposers to the world of southern 
inhumanity, it must of course be all right.' The mule, in 

* Vol. ii. pp. 257, 2oS. 



174 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

one of his caprices, does some obstinate thing, and his 
driver then compares him to " a proslavery demagogue." 
His mode of dealing with the mule was so much like the 
waj in which, doubtless, he has heard some men reason 
with the south, that while employed in showering granite 
upon the dumb beast, proslavery men were readily sug- 
gested to his thoughts. The trimmings of low discourse 
with some whom he can call to mind are flings at slave- 
holders. How strange it would seem to hear certain 
men speak of slaveholders with courtesy, and of their 
alleged sins with Christian sorrow, or even with a Chris- 
tian indignation. 

As specimens of the unjust manner in which our 
country is regarded and spoken of under the influence 
of certain representations of slavery, the following in- 
stances are in place. In this last-named book we read 
that, — 

" Madam Belloc received, a day or two since,, a letter 
from a lady in the old town of Orleans, which gave name 
to Joan of Arc, expressing; the most earnest enthusiasm in 
the antislavery cause. Her prayers, she says, will ascend 
night and day for those brave souls in America who are 
conflicting vri'th this mighty injustice."' — Vol. ii. p. 416. 

The question arises, " Who are these brave souls ? " 
We know, probably, to whom this refers ; but what claim 
have they to be called brave ? They have said a great 
many brave things, but have they done any ? They have 
added the great State of Texas to slave territory, and 
this is characteristic of their history ; their efforts have 
all redounded to prevent emancipation, and strengthen 
and extend slavery. They are like an army with no 
weapons but boomerangs, which, before reaching the 
object, turn in the air, and come back in the faces of those 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 175 

who hurl them. For ill-adapted, unsuccessful efforts, no 
party ever made such an impression upon bystanders. 
Deborah would have felt obliged to upbraid them as she 
did Reuben in her war ; Elijah, seeing them leaping on 
their altar at their anniversary, crying and cutting them- 
selves, would have bid them cry louder ; while as to 
some of their number who kept not their first estate, 
the apostle Jude could most appropriately have cliarac- 
terized and denounced them. They fling the Bible 
across the platform ; impiously boast on whom they would 
put their feet, if He should teach otherwise than their 
resolutions have it ; then pause for a poor non-resistant 
but extra-clamorous fanatic to be lifted out of doors by 
his hands and heels, when they proceed to assail that 
church of which they have been forewarned from the 
beginning that they should "■ never prevail against it." 

The rest of us in this land, in the view of estimable 
foreigners whose knowledge with regard to our slaves 
began and ended in the Cabin, are a cruel, prejudiced, 
besotted people, upholding a mighty injustice, while a 
few "brave souls," comprising most of the piety and 
humanity in the United States, are contending Avith us 
at fearful odds in the spirit of Christian heroes. 

In anotlier part of the book the author describes a 
class of Americans in Paris who plunge into tlie stream 
of fashion and pleasure, and " speak with heartless levity 
of the revolutions in France as of a pantomime got up' 
for their diversion:" they are "young America, fresh: 
from the theatres and gambling saloons, declaring, be- 
tween the whiffs of his cigar, that the French are not 
capable of free institutions ; that the government of Louis 
Napoleon is the best thing France could have, " and 
dividing the time between defences of American slavery 
12 



176 A SOUTH-SID^ VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

aiid efforts to attach themselves to the skirts of French 
tyranny.'-' Having described this class of men, the 
writer remarks, — 

'• Thus from the phigue spot at her heart has America 
become the propagandist of despotism in Europe." — Vol. ii. 
p. 418. 

These few young gentlemen of the town, then, are 
America's representatives, for whose judgments and 
•flashy sayings all the north, and west, and south are re- 
sponsible, and by whom we are '' propagating despotism," 
because, before they sailed for Paris, the country had 
not been able to agree as to the proper light in which to 
regard and treat the subject of shivery. For very 
many private reasons, it is painful to make these re- 
flections ; but it is time to see if we can not arrest the 
hurtful way in which some speak of their country in 
connection with slavery, or, at least, to let the more 
sensible among them see how their mode of speaking 
strikes some among their friends, of whose candor and 
kindness they have had sutlicient proof. Here is an 
illustration : — 

" In the course of the afternoon a telegraph came from 
the mayor of Liverpool, to inquire if our party would ac- 
'cept a public breakfast at the town hall, before sailing, as 
a demonstration of sympathy with the cause of freedom^ — 
Vol. ii. p. 431. 

The words itahcized (not by the author) are like 
thousands of similar instances in other writers and speak- 
•ers ; but the sentence which follows the above deepens 
the impression by awaking a melancholy feeling: — 

" Remembering the time when Clarkson began his career 
amid such opposition in Liverpool, we could not but regard 
such an evidence of its present public sentiment as full of 
encouragement." 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 177 

We see no proportion nor contrast between this offer 
of a breakfast to our American antislavery friends and 
the original opposition to Clarkson. 

Here is somethinoj entertaininor : — 

" A French gentleman who was greatly distressed in 
view of the sufferings of the negro race in America, said, 

naively enough, to Mrs. C , that he had heard that the 

negroes had great capability for music, dancing, and the 
fine arts, and inquired whether something could not be 
done to move sympathy in their behalf, by training them 
to exhibit characteristic dances and pantomimes."' — Vol. 
ii. p. 416. 

Here I recalled the impressions made upon me by the 

respectable appearance and the religious demeanor of 

the slaves m southern towns and cities, and thought how 

little those slaves need this good monsieur to "move 

sympathy " for them, and what an injurious, insulting 

proposition this seems, to one recently from the south, 

that those slaves should be taken about to jump Jim 

Crow for the benefit of abolitionism. These "friends 

of the slaves," to whom this benighted speech was made, 

had no correction at hand for it ; but 

'' Mrs. C quoted to him the action of one of the great 

ecclesiastical bodies in America, in the same breath de- 
clining to condemn slavery, but denouncing dancing as so 
w^holly of the world lying in wickedness as to require 
condign ecclesiastical censure. The poor man was whol- 
ly lost in amazement.*'" — Vol. ii. p. 416. 

There is a strange comparison in this book of the 
French and American republics, in view of the aboli- 
tion of slavery in French colonies, and our refusal to 
emancipate the slaves, who are a part of society here. 
Passing this, we come to the following, which is a great 
trial of American equanimity : — 

" A deputation from Ireland here met me, presenting a 



178 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

beautiful bog-oak casket, lined with gold, and carved with 
appropriate national symbols. They read a beautiful ad- 
dress, and touched upon the importance of inspiring with 
the principles of emancipation the Irish nation, whose in- 
fluence in our land is becoming so great." — Vol. ii. p. 431. 

To excite the poor Irish emigrants with zeal against 
American slavery is to some of equal importance with 
lifting them from their proximity to the brutes. One 
great cause of reluctance to emancipate, is and will con- 
tinue to be, the fear that our colored people would be- 
come what these Irish are at home. 

Once more. The writer is at the Pantheon in Paris. 

'' Now, this Pantheon seems to me a monument of the 
faults and the weakness of this very agreeable nation. Its 
history shows their enthusiasm, their hero worship, and the 
want of stabler religious convictions. Nowhere has there 
been such a want of reverence for the Creator, unless in 
the American Congress." — Vol. ii. p. 399. 

There have been infidels, atheists, and all descriptions 
of men in the American Congress, individuals who have 
at times spoken in a way to pierce the heart of the 
country to the core. So in State legislatures, lyceums, 
conventions, freedom of speech has been indulged to 
licentiousness. But the American Congress maintain 
daily prayers and public worship on the Sabbath, and a 
private prayer meeting has for a long time been attend- 
ed by a goodly number of that body. This comparison 
in the Pantheon of our national legislature with French 
infidels, in the matter of irreverence toward God, shows 
a state of feeling toward her country for which neither 
the writer's descent, education, or natural disposition is 
answerable, for they are above reproach ; but she is 
unduly affected by her party position with regard to 
slavery. She sees a negro standing in the sun, as she 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIET7 OF SLAVERY. 179 

looks from foreign shores to her own land, and this is 
Uncle Tom's right ascension in her astronomy of our 
heavens. In her reperusal abroad of Walter Scott, did 
this writer forget the Lay of the Last Minstrel and never 
say to her soul — 

" This is my own, my native land " ? 

Yes, but the book, the romance, had been written, and it 
created an atmosphere which is a sufficient apology for 
every thing. We enter an arrest of judgment for her 
against the poet. She shall not " forfeit fair renown." 
She will live, we trust, to change the tone of her present 
feehngs, when the providence of God unfolds something 
more of his mysterious, but, we will persist in our hope, 
benevolent, purposes in connection with American sla- 
very. When we all think and feel alike in regard to 
this perplexing and now inscrutable subject, we shall 
rejoice to see this prophetess in Africa's captivity tak- 
ing her timbrel and leading us forth in songs and dances 
at Africa's redemption. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

BRITISH INTEREST IN AMERICAN SLAVERY. 

There is no land in which the common people are 
better clothed, sheltered, and fed than in the United 
States, with the exception of one class ; and that is, some 
who come to us from Great Britain, the poorer class of 
the Irish Catholics. Human nature in civilized life sel- 
dom goes down to worse degradation than in them, and 
the land that suffers such specimens of moral deformity 
to go from her, not in solitary instances, but in ship 
loads, never should offer compassionating prayers and 
exhortations, much less reproaches with regard to any 
other nation, until this class of her own subjects is 
improved. The most appropriate object in this country 
for British commiseration and tears, and for addresses 
from ladies to their sisters here, is the condition of their 
own people, exiles from Great Britain, some of whom 
look as the old Egyptians would on whom a few of the ten 
plagues should have made their mark. To go from their 
cellars and garrets in Boston and New York, and look 
upon the southern slaves enjoying not only the necessa- 
ries, but in towns and cities the luxuries, of life, in- 
dulged with all the comforts, and even, in many cases, 
with the superfluities, of dress, the most cheerful class 
of people that meets the eye of a stranger in this or any 
land, and every where enjoying the influences of pure 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 181 

religion, makes one consider what misplaced pity there 
is in British lamentations over American slavery. 

The abolition of British slavery gives no right to 
speak to us even in the language of instruction. To 
abolish slavery in a foreign colony is like cutting off a 
wen from the body ; our slavery is in our constitution, 
our blood. Great Britain has never exercised any thing 
like the curative, painful, critical treatment which eman- 
cipation here would be to us. There is no parallel in 
raising twenty millions of pounds, and setting free the 
blacks of the British West Indies, to abolishing Ameri- 
can slavery from the very warj) and woof of human life 
in one third of this nation. 

This venerable mother England, her hoary age reck- 
oned by centuries, has only a few years since begun to re- 
form certain dreadful oppressions and wrongs among her 
population at home, yet has seemed unwilhng to allow 
her daughter, just come of age, a little time to dispose 
of one evil imposed upon us by her own hands, and 
which the country, as such, has no power to remove. 

In Charlotte Elizabeth's Wrongs of Women, and 
Howitt's Rural Life in England, there are materials 
for a more powerful appeal to the feelings of humanity 
than can be found in American slavery, provided they 
could be wrought by true genius into the form of a tale. 
Indeed, there are appeals founded on facts, in the first- 
named book, in behalf of the milliners, seamstresses, 
pin makers, lace makers, and colliers of England, which 
leave an American reader at a loss to account for Brit- 
ish interest, in years past, with regard to our slaves, 
while such disclosures and remonstrances were pubhshed 
in Great Britain. Well did Charlotte Elizabeth say, 
" Infanticide in India or China is a very awful thing ; 



182 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

slavery on the African coast makes our freeborn blood 
tingle in our veins ; and against both, man's lip can utter 
most persuasive sounds of eloquent appeal, woman's 
eye can shed a torrent of soft tears over the tale, but — 
infanticide in Nottingham or Birmingham, slavery in 
Manchester or Leeds — our excited feelings are calmed 
down ; the bright flame of our zeal expires." * 

A good way to correct a morbid state of feeling pro- 
duced by reading a novel founded on American slavery 
is to read, for example, a piece by the above-named 
writer, which parallels any thing which slavery has ever 
furnished. Let it be remembered that the evils of sla- 
very are mostly its abuses, but the evils depicted in 
such descriptions as the one that follows are system- 
atized wrongs, which within a few years the EngHsh 
have begun to remove, but find that the abolition of evils 
interwoven with society at home is not a simple and 
easy work. 

Nell Carter was employed about an English coal 
mine, and Alice Smith, a villager's wife, had come 
with her husband to the manufacturing district to 
earn money. Nell unfolds to Alice the mysteries of 
the pits : t — 



" ' You see that girl with red hair, the most foul-mouthed 
young slut that ever used bad words ; well, she is one of 
nine children, all living in this place ; and I think not one 
of them knows who made 'em, they're so ignorant. Their 
mother was a tidy girl, married, very young, to a miner; 
and he had hardly got her into his power when he took her 
down into the coal pits " to hurry " for him. You don't 
know what that is ? 'Tis the drawing of a wooden car- 
riage, heavy loaded with coals, along the seams of a mine, 

* Wrongs of Women, p. 278, New York ed. 
t Ibid. pp. 99-101. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 183 

where a body couldn't stand half upright, where all is 
dark as midnight^ except the candlestick in the miner's 
cap ; and where she had to slave like a brute beast, in 
nothing but her body linen, with a coarse pair of trousers, 
a thick leathern belt round her waist, a heavy iron chain 
fastened to it, passing between her legs and hooked on to the 
carriage, and she dragging it, almost on all fours, through 
these passages ; ten, twelve, fourteen, or sixteen hours — I 
was going to say every day — but there was no day for 
her. It was dark night always in that frightful mine, and 
dark nights above ground before she could leave it. 

'- ' She toiled so for a few months, with her own husband to 
drive her on in the work ; but he found her earnings would 
keep him idle half the week, and so he left her there — poor 
young thing — among such a set that the worst you ever saw 
here are angels to them. She worked till the morning of 
the day her first child was born, — a lovely boy, — and had 
to go down again in less than a fortnight, to the same life. 
Till then, she had kept herself different from the rest ; but 
it seemed the parting her from the baby made her desper- 
ate. I was told her wild lauah would ring ajjain through 
the long, black galleries, and her jests keep them all merry ; 
but her heart was breaking as fast as it could then, and it 
had broke. But we are blind creatures, and can't tell what 
is best. It was a great lord owned all these mines ; his 
agent gave good wages, and got the worth of them out of 
the miners too. Penrose, seeing the value his wife's toil 
was of, took some pains to keep her from sinking, and she 
came round a little, especially when he gave her a holiday 
now and then to nurse her boy. She had that girl, yonder, 
for her next; and by the time the third was born. I think 
she'd as little of human nature left about her as could well 
be found even in a coal pit. My heart has ached to see 
her, all black and filthy, with a pipe in her mouth, swag- 
gering or standing about, swearing and talking as nobody 
in a Christian laud should be let talk. And it was with her 
own consent that at four years old her little boy was carried 
down to his work in the pit.' 

'' She pauses, for all the color has left Alice Smith's 
face ; then hastily resumes. 

" ^ Don't suppose they set the baby '■' to hurry ; " no, he 
was only a trapper, sittinir behind a door to pull it open 
with a string; when any of the cobs came up. But it was 
all in darkness, cold, and silence ; and the child dared not 
sleep through the long, long, black hours : and he said, 
poor little thing ! — but no matter for that; we will talk of 



184 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

the mother. Ah, you begin to feel in. your heart, now, that 
your lot isn't so bad as it might be ! I see that. The poor 
woman bore ten or eleven children ; nine lived, which was 
a w^onder in all the place. She died at last by an awful 
death. One of her own children was winding at the pit's 
mouth, and, by carelessness natural in a child, overwound 
the rope ; the bucket was drawn over the roller, and down, 
down she went, how many hundred feet I can not say ; but 
there was no life in the mangled body.' " 

While such fearful things as these abounded in the 
English collieries, and while every dressmaking estab- 
lishment, as this writer says, in the language of an 
agent, " killed a gal a year," and Thomas Hood was 
writing the Song of the Shirt, addresses, remonstrances, 
were sent over by public bodies to this country, plead- 
ing for the slave. The ladies, who were responsible 
for the woes of the laboring classes of women, joined 
in appeals to their sisters here with regard to the con- 
dition of the slaves ; but, most wonderful of all, remon- 
strances came from ecclesiastical bodies in Ireland, which 
was then depositing upon our shores a population which 
Tiad few rivals in misery. Y/ell may we use Whitefield's 
well-known exclamation, "Lord, what is man"! The 
truth is, this subject of slavery has been the occasion of 
more fanaticism than almost any thing since the crusades. 

We will not recriminate ; but a sense of mjustice to us 
compels us to allude to one thing for which England has 
not exercised sufficient repentance, nor made sufficient 
atonement, to warrant many tears on our account. The 
wrongs and woes inflicted on young children in Great 
Britain have nothing to correspond with them in any 
Christian country. Allusion is made to this topic in the 
extract already given. There is a piece of poetry by 
Miss Barrett (Mrs. Browning) which is unsurpassed in 
the English language for its power to move the feelings, 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 185 

called the " Cry of the Children." Sent down at four 
years of age, many of them, to work under ground, they 
find an eloquent pleader in this exquisite poetess, as 
follows5(the dashes indicating imperfect quotations : — ) 

" Do ye hear the children weeping, my brothers : — 
Do you question the young children in their sorrow ? 
Your old earth, they say, is very dreary. — 
Our young feet, they say, are very weak. — 
The graves are for the old. — 
Little Alice died last year ; — 
"VVe looked into the pit prepared to take her ; 
There was no room for any work in the close clay ; 
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, 
Crying, Get up, little Alice ; it is day. 
If you listen by that grave in sun and shower, 
"With your ear down, little Alice never cries. — 
It is good when it happens, say the children, 
That we die before our time. — 
Go out, childi-en, from the mine. — 
Pluck the meadow cowslips. — 
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely 
To lie down in them and sleep. — 
The reddest flowers would look as pale as snow." 

" All day long the wheels are droning, turning ; 

Their wind comes in our faces ; 
Till our hearts turn, and our heads with pulses burning, 

And the walls turn in their places. 
Turns the sky in the high wndow, blank and reeling, 

Turns the long light that droopeth down the wall, 
Turn the black flies, that crawl along the ceiling ; 

Are all turning all the day, and we with all ! — 
And sometimes we could pray, — 
ye wheels, stop, be silent for a day." — 

" And well may the children weep before ye ; 
They are iceary ere they run. 

They know the grief of men, but not the wisdom ; 
Are slaves without liberty in Christdom ; 
Are martyrs by the pang \\-ithout the palm." 

Then comes this awful close : — 



186 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

♦' How long, they say, how long, O cruel nation, 

WiU you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart, 
Trample down with mailed heel its palpitation. 

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart ? 
Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants, 

And your purple shows your path. 
But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence 

Than the strong man in his tvrathy 

A nation who had had such a piece as this written about 
them, verified by commissioners of Parhament, ought 
to have been sure that no trace of this enormous wrong 
remained when they rejected American preachers for 
not being up to their mark on the subject of aboHshing 
slavery, and before they remonstrated with slaveliolders. 
Let any one read Miss Barrett's piece at the south, in 
sight of some little negroes, on any plantation, or in any 
town or city. Their condition is paradise compared 
with that of those whose " cry " is echoed by this lady. 
What if the colored children in the slave States should 
have had this piece read and explained to them, and an 
address should have been written for them to Mrs. 
Browning, thanking her for her interest in the suf- 
fering children of her own realm, and inviting her to 
make the tour of the Southern States. We could have 
made speeches and presented addresses about " the cry 
of the children " in England which would have been 
extremely distasteful across the water, especially if Eng- 
land itself were at that time exasperated by a sectional 
controversy on the subject almost to the point of a civil 
war. 

It is an occasion for wonder to think of the common 
antislavery feelings of our own people at the north, com- 
pared with the small amount of zeal and effort employed 
in behalf of the British outcasts in our cities. Were such 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 187 

meetings and such speeches as are employed to rouse up 
the north against slavery used to direct public attention 
to these unhappy creatures, no infidel orator at those 
meetings would then be subjected to the divine reproach 
of something worse, if possible, than his infidelity, name- 
ly, of not providing for his own. When shall we send 
food, and raiment, and shelter, and means of cleanliness, 
not to say Christian teachers, to the poor of our own 
cities, to the degree in which the slaves at the south en- 
joy these blessings ? Let us use in behalf of our own 
poor those stirring appeals drawn from "one blood," "all 
men free and equal," " am I not a man and brother ? " 
and add, if we please, " Bunker Hill," "Bill of Rights," 
"American Independence." There are men, women, 
and children, who are our neighbors, that need this elo- 
quence in their behalf more than the slaves. They can 
not recompense us, it is true, with notoriety ; nor with 
political advantage, except that we shall do most, in car- 
ing for them, to save the country. You may establish 
schools among these with no danger of imprisonment ; 
visit them in their miserable homes, and talk kindly to 
them, without being suspected of incendiary motives ; 
protect fugitives from God and virtue without breaking 
any laws. No chains about the Court House prevent you 
from interposing as bail for tempted souls in their first 
step into crime ; no Mason's and Dixon's line makes a 
boundary to your lawful zeal. These poor ye have al- 
ways with you, and when ye will ye may do them good. 
If the saying be true, that a man who goes to law 
should have clean hands, he who reproves others for neg- 
lect and sin should be sure that the God before whom he 
arraigns them can not wither him by that rebuke, " Thou 
hypocrite ! first cast out the beam out of thine own eye ! " 



188 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

In the following extract from a late number of the 
New Orleans Creole, we see liow the gospel is triumph- 
ing over well-known obstacles in that city : — 

Religious Instruction or the Blacks in New 
Orleans. — No one who has spent a month in New Or- 
leans will deny the fact that the colored population of our 
city is a happy, well-dressed, and improving race. They 
are far above the poorer class, or day laborers, of northern 
towns, in all that tends to comfort and freedom from care. 

It affords matter of astonishment, and an interesting 
subject for reflectiouj to those from the Northern States, to 
stand on the corners of any of our thoroughfares, of a Sab- 
bath morning or an afternoon, and witness the constant 
succession of group after group of colored people, arrayed 
in plain, neat, and elegant attire, consisting often of w^hole 
families, from aged grandsire to toddling grandchild ; their 
faces expressive of content and abundance ; their conver- 
sation indicative of genuine happiness, as they wend their 
way to the various places of worship provided in the city 
for their accommodation. There is no countenance sharp- 
ened by want ; there is no miserable caricature of human- 
ity, redolent with filth, with rags fluttering in the breeze ; 
there is no infantile visage crushed into the mould of age ; 
but ever varied as our colored population is in features and 
dress, there is the undoubted proof of enjoyment, of plenty, 
of kind treatment, and of contentedness. 

In the family circle, they receive religious instruction, as 
well as from the pulpits of their churches. The Sabbath 
school and the lecture room are open to their entrance. 

We w^andered, a week or two since, to the neighborhood 
of one of their principal places for worship. Before us 
the street was dotted with gay troops of black, brown, and 
tawny, on their way to the church. Long before we reached 
the edifice, the notes of sacred music broke upon the 
ear, chanted by voices of black worshipers. As we came 
to the door of the sacred edifice, a novel scene was pre- 
sented. The pulpit was occupied by a preacher of ebony 
blackness ; around the altar sat several white men, under 
whose especial care were the exercises of the occasion, 
who did not, however^ interfere with the management of 
the religious services. There was a gravity in the gathered 
audience, filling the entire area of the building, which 
whiter congregations, in some places, might happily imitate. 

It was soul-inspiring to witness the enthusiasm with 
which the hymn was sung, the whole audience rising in 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 189 



token of respect ; and untutored as were the voices of the 
many, a note of liquid sweetness was heard, which wouM 
have brought down the theatrical critics with thunders of 
applause. When the prayer was offered, they all bowed, 
as though each one was personally interested in the peti- 
tion, fervently but rudely uttered. How simply the wants 
of that crowd were presented ! How trustingly the peti- 
tion was made ! 

The topic of the preacher was the glory of heaven. 
The speaker knew his hearers. He adapted his language 
to their capacity. We can not avoid giving an instance of 
illustration, apt and forcible : — 

'' My bredren,'" said he, as he pointed to a stagnant ca- 
nal and filthy thoroughfare, '^ de streets here am full ob 
mud; de water still until it is full of corruption ; de hot sun 
makes it steam up with bad smells, and often fill de whole 
city wid death. But, bressed be God, my bredren, dare is 
no muddy streets in heben : dare are golden pavements 
and pure waters, and de air is full ob de smell ob de violet 
and de rose, and de face ob God ever makes de place glo- 
rious wid hebenly light." 

The muttered exclamation of assent showed he had 
awakened the feelings of his hearers ; and the swinging 
to and fro of the crowds proved the enthusiasm with which 
they were moved. 

This scene is repeated on a smaller or larger scale all 
over the south. The Methodist and Baptist black churches 
in this city have a very large number of communicants. 
It is generally acknowledged, by all classes of the com- 
munity, that religious advantages for the slave are imper- 
atively demanded from the master. 

Our plantation slaves on the coast have their regular 
ministers in religious things ; generally a white clergyman 
of standi 
bath day 

We are familiar with the means of religious instruction 
for the poor in northern cities, and we can safely aver that 
their advantages fall far short of those granted the blacks 
of the south. 



190 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE BIBLE AND SLAVERY. 

When the Hebrew nation was organized oy the Most 
High, he found among the people masters and slaves. 
He could have purged out slaveholding by positive 
enactments ; he could have rid the people of all the 
slave owners by making their dead bodies fall in the wil- 
derness. Instead of this, he made slavery the subject 
of legislation, prescribed its duties, and protected the 
parties concerned in the performance of them. 

But who can withhold his tribute of love and adora- 
tion at the divine goodness and wisdom which mark the 
whole Mosaic code, as illustrated in that honorable re- 
gard for man, as man, which strove continually to lift and 
break the yoke of bondage to his fellow-man from his 
neck ? They who assert that the Bible sanctions the 
relation of master and slave are bound to show in what 
spirit and with what intentions the Most High per- 
mitted the relation to remain. Otherwise they commit 
the fearful mistake of making infinite goodness and wis- 
dom countenance oppression. 

There are some extremely interesting and even beau- 
tiful illustrations in the Bible of the destiny of involun- 
tary servitude to be from the first a waning, transient 
relation. Every thing pointed to freedom as the desira- 
ble condition; easements, deliverances from it, were 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 191 

skillfully prepared in the Hebrew constitution. Maim- 
ing, concubinage, the children of concubines, years of 
release, jubilees, all the various conditions and seasons 
connected with the termination of bondage, show that 
slavery was a condition out of which it is the destiny of 
human nature to rise ; and falling into it is a calamity, 
a retrogression. 

The preferableness of freedom to slavery, in the divine 
mind and plan, is set forth in the passage where Jere- 
miah, in the name of God, directed, in the last days of 
the nation, that every Hebrew servant should be manu- 
mitted according to law; for afflictions were making them 
break off their sins. This divine injunction was obeyed ; 
but afterwards they reconsidered their repentance, and 
the servants were reduced again to bondage. God ap- 
peals to them against this outrage, by reminding them 
of Egypt, and of his appointment in their early history 
of years of release, and charges them with " polluting " 
his name by the reestablishment of slavery over those 
who had a right to liberty, threatening them for this in 
these words of awful irony : " Behold, I proclaim a lib- 
erty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pesti- 
lence, and to the famine ; and I will make you to be 
removed into all the kingdoms of the earth." * 

The New Testament speaks out, not in ordinances, 
but in words, and teaches more distinctly that freedom 
is to be preferred when it may be had. " If thou mayest 
be free, use it rather." 

It is as though bondage were incident to darkness and 
twilight, and removable only by the clear sunlight of a 
state of society which would be incompatible with every 

* Jer. xxxiv. 8-22. 

13 



192 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVEEY. 

form of oppression. So we find that wherever the influ- 
ence of religion reaches a high point, slavery wholly 
changes its character, though it may continue in form and 
name. It may be benevolent to individuals, to a class, 
that the form of slavery remain ; but in such a case the 
yoke is broken, and to fight against the form and the 
name, when the thing itself had ceased to be an evil, 
would be to fight a shadow. 

The wise manner in wliich the Apostles deal with 
slavery is one mcidental proof of their inspiration. 
The hand of the same God who framed the Mosaic code 
is evidently still at work in directing his servants, the 
Apostles, how to deal with slavery. Men with their 
benevolence and zeal, if left to themselves, would, some 
of them, have gone to extremes on that subject ; for 
" ultraism," as we call it, is the natural tendency of good 
men, not fully instructed, in their early zeal. The dis- 
position to put away a heathen husband or wife, abstain- 
ing from marriage and from meats, Timothy's omission 
to take wine in sickness, show this, and make it re- 
markable that slavery was dealt with as it was by the 
Apostles. Only they who had the Spirit of God in them 
could have spoken so wisely, so temperately, with regard 
to an evil which met them every where with its bad 
influences and grievous sorrows. Some in their day, who 
professed to be Christian teachers, were " ultraists," and 
could not restrain themselves, but evidently encouraged 
servants not to count their masters worthy of all honor, 
and to use the equality of divine grace to them and their 
believing masters, as a claim to equality in other things, 
thus despising their believing masters because they were 
brethren. Never is the Apostle Paul more severe in the 
use of epithets than in denouncing such teachers and 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 193 

their doctrines. Far as possible from countenancing 
servitude as a condition which man has a right to per- 
petuate, or to which any class of men is doomed, but 
declaring plainly that freedom is to be preferred by the 
slave, he and his fellow-laborers employed themselves 
in disseminating those principles and that spirit which 
would make slavery as an oppression impossible, chan- 
ging its whole nature by abolishing all the motives which 
create such an institution. But as it is not sunrise in 
every place at the same moment, and in places where 
the sun has risen there are ravines and vales, where the 
light is slow to enter, so we can not expect that the evils 
of slavery will disappear at once, even where the religion 
of Christ generally prevails ; but in proportion as it ex- 
tends its influence, slavery is sure to cease in all its 
objectionable features. An interesting illustration of 
this, on a large scale, is afforded by the state of slavery 
in the United States and Cuba. Spanish slavery has a 
very mild code, but is severe and oppressive. American 
slavery has perhaps as rigid a code as any ; but practi- 
cally, it is the mildest form of involuntary servitude, 
and few would justify themselves in doing no better for 
their slaves than the law requires. Pure religion must 
have the credit of this difference, teaching us that to 
remove slavery we must promote spiritual religion, and 
to this end use every means to propagate Christian 
knowledge and Christian charity. 

We are not as wise as Paul if we withdraw our 
Christian teachers and books, imbued with the great 
principles of pure religion, from communities where we 
are not allowed to do all the good which we may de- 
sire, or to present a duty in such specific forms as our 
preferences dictate. Our principle ought not to be, to 



194 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

abandon men as soon as we are resisted, or can not say 
and do all that we would ; but we should study ways to 
remain, trusting to the power of light and love to open 
doors for us. The dust which we too readily shake off 
from our feet against men will be a witness against us, 
rather than against them. It must gratify the arch 
enemy to see us withdraw our forces in solemn indigna- 
tion at his show of resistance. The children of this 
world do not suffer themselves to be so easily foiled, nor 
do they force unacceptable offerings upon Japan, but 
ply her with things to tempt her desire for further com- 
modities, representing their usefulness in ways which 
do not excite national jealousy and pride. 

It is refreshing to escape from those books of over- 
heated zeal which attack slavery, and read the passages 
in the New Testament relating to the subject ; breath- 
ing a spirit fatal to oppression, yet counseling no meas- 
ures against it because of its seeming trust in its own 
omnipotent influence wherever it shall build its throne. 

Paul's refusal to interfere between Onesimus and his 
master is one of those gentle lessons of wisdom on this 
subject which are so characteristic of his spirit in deal- 
ing with this public evil. That small epistle to Phile- 
mon, that one chapter, that little piece of parchment, 
that mere note of apology, — that this should have 
fallen into the sacred canon, and not the epistle to La- 
odicea, is curious and interesting to those who regard 
the providence of God in the canon of Scripture. That 
little writing is like a small, firm beach, where storms 
have beaten, but have left it pure and white. It is the 
least of all seeds in Paul's Epistles. It is a curiosity of 
inspiration, a solitary idiom in a language, a Stonehenge 
in a country, a warm stream in the sea ; it begins with 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 195 

loving salutations, ends with affectionate Christian mes- 
sages, and sends back a servant to his master and to a 
system of slavery under which this fugitive could, if his 
master required, be put to death. Now, he who argues 
from this that he has an unqualified right to reclaim his 
slave, and subject him to just such treatment as he 
pleases, is as much at fault as those who are at the 
other extreme. It was to a Philemon that Onesimus 
was returned ; it was to Abraham's house that Hagar 
was remanded. While the abstract principle of owner- 
ship is defended by these examples, he who uses them to 
the injury of a fellow-being will find that God has stores 
of vengeance for him, and that his ovm "Master in 
heaven" is the inexorable Judge. 

The difference in the Apostles' way of dealing with 
slavery, and with other evils, teaches clearly that the 
relation itself is not in their view sinful. Many insist 
that it is sinful, that the Apostles must so have regarded 
it, and that the reason why they did not attack it is, they 
would not interfere with the laws and government. It 
is said " they girdled slavery, and left it to die." 

But this surely is not in accordance with the apostolic 
spirit. There is no public wickedness which they mere- 
ly girdled and left to die. Paul did not quietly pass his 
axe round the public sins of his day. His divine Mas- 
ter did not so deal with adultery and divorces. James 
did not girdle wars and fightings, governmental measures. 
Let Jude be questioned on this point, with that thunder- 
bolt of an Epistle in -his hand. Even the beloved dis- 
ciple disdained this gentle method of dealing with pub- 
lic sins when he prophesied against all the governments 
of the earth at once. 

But slavery, declared by some to be the greatest sin 



196 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

against God's image in man, most fruitful, it is said, of 
evils, is not assaulted, but the sins and abuses under it are 
reproved, the duties pertaining to the relation of master 
and slave are prescribed, a slave is sent back to servitude 
with an inspired epistle in his hand, and slavery itself 
is nowhere assailed. On the contrary, masters are in- 
structed and exhorted with regard to their duties as slave- 
holders. Suppose the instructions which are addressed 
to slaveholders to be addressed to those sinners with 
whom slaveholders are promiscuously classed by many, 
for example : " Thieves, render to those from whom you 
may continue to steal, that which is just and equal." "And, 
ye murderers, do the same things unto your victims, 
forbearing threatening." " Let as many as are cheated 
count their extortioners worthy of all honor." If to be a 
slave owner is in itself parallel with stealing and other 
crimes, miserable subterfuge to say that Paul did not 
denounce it because it was connected with the institu- 
tions of society ; that he " girdled it, and left it to die." 
Happy they whose principles with regard to slavery 
enable them to have a higher opinion of Paul than thus 
to make him a timeserver and a slave to expediency. 

But was he therefore " a proslavery man " ? Not he. 
"Would he have spoken against the system of American 
slavery had he lived in our day ? Surely he would ; 
against its evils, its abuses, its sins, but not against the 
relation of master and slave. Suppose that Philemon 
had thrown Onesimus into prison for absconding, and 
Paul had heard of his having lain there three months 
till he was sick with jail fever, and likely to die. If he 
could have reached Philemon through church discipline, 
and the offender had persisted in his sin, we can imagine 
Paul directing the church "in the name of the Lord Jesus 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 197 

to deliver sucli an one to Satan for the destruction of the 
flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord 
Jesus." Any church that suffers a member to deal 
wrongfully with his servant, or suffers a slave member 
to be recklessly sold, has in Paul's epistles single words 
and whole sentences which ought to make it quail. Yet 
there is not a word there against the relation of master 
and slave ; and for what reason ? 

The way in which the Apostles evidently purposed 
to remove slavery, w'as by creating a state of things in 
which it would cease. This method is not analogous to 
girdling trees, but to another process resorted to by hus- 
bandmen. Their only method of expelling certain 
weeds — sorrel, for example — is, to enrich the soil. 
The gospel is to slavery w^hat the growing of clover is 
to sorrel. Keligion in the masters destroys every thing 
in slavery which makes it obnoxious ; and not only so, 
it converts the relation of the slave into an effectual 
means of happiness. In many instances at the south, 
for example, slavery is no more slavery so long as those 
masters live ; and if religion were every where pre- 
dominant, their servants would not suffer by the death 
of their masters any more than by time and chance, 
which happen to all. Religion w^ill never remove men's 
need of being served and of serving ; but it will make 
service an honorable and happy employment, under what- 
ever name it may pass. And as farmers do not attack 
weeds for the mere sake of expelling them, but to use 
their place for something better, so the New Testament 
does not attack slavery to drive it out, but gets posses- 
sion of the heart, which is naturally tyrannical and cov- 
etous, and, filling it with the fruits of the Spirit, the 
works of the flesh disappear. 



198 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

When a man repents and is converted, lie does not 
repent of his sins one by one, but there is a state of heart 
created within him, with regard to all sin, which constitutes 
repentance. In accordance with this we do not find the 
Bible laboring merely to make a man specifically peni- 
tent, but it uses one sin and another to lead the man back 
to that heart which is the root of all his sins. Those who 
preach to convicts tell us that when they are convinced 
of sin, if they fix their thoughts upon particular trans- 
gressions, and make them the special subjects of repent- 
ance, one of two things happens ; they either see the 
whole of their sin and misery by means of these in- 
stances of wickedness, or they confine their thoughts to 
these items, and then become superficial and self-righteous. 
David's sin, as we see by the fifty-first Psalm, led him to 
feel and deplore his ruined nature. Many attempts to 
reform particular evils in society which grow out of hu- 
man wickedness have no effect to make men true peni- 
tents, though reformations of morals and of abuses are al- 
ways auxiliary to religion ; but if an equal amount of zeal 
■employed in assailing abuses were employed in promot- 
ing Christian piety and charity by diffusing Christian 
knowledge and ordinances, and also by the influence of 
a good temper and spirit, especially where Christian men 
are the objects of our zeal, and their cooperation and 
influence are our surest means of success, we should see 
changes in society brought about in a healthful way, 
which would be permanent because of the basis of char- 
acter on which they would rest. But all this antifebrile 
sentiment is scorned by overheated zealots. Still there 
is sound discretion in these words of Dr. Chalmers : — 

" I have been a projector in my day, and, much as I have 
been employed with the economics of society, my convic- 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 199 

tion is more and more strengthened in the utter vanity of 
all expedients short of faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ j 
whose disciples are the salt of the earth, and through whose 
spirituality and religion, alone, we can look for the perma- 
nent civilization and comfort of the species, or even for 
earthly blessings ; which come after, and not before, the 
kingdom of God and his righteousness.'^ * 



The apostolic spirit with regard to slavery, surely, is 
not of the same tone with the spirit which encourages 
slaves every where to flee from their masters, and teaches 
them that his swiftest horse, his boat, his purse, are theirs, 
if they wish to escape. Philemon, traveling with Ones- 
imus, was not annoyed by a vigilance committee of Paul's 
Chi'istian friends with a habeas corpus to rescue the ser- 
vant from his master ; nor did these friends watch the 
arrival of ships to receive a fugitive consigned by " the 
saints and faithful brethren which were at Colosse" to the 
" friends of the slave " at Corinth. True, these disci- 
ples had not enjoyed the light which the Declaration of 
American Independence sheds on the subject of human 
rights. Moses, Paul, and Christ were their authorities 
on moral subjects ; but our infidels tell us that we should 
have a far different New Testament could it be writ- 
ten for us now ; but since we can not have a new Bible 
now and then, this proves that " God can not make a 
revelation to us in a book." Every man, they say, must 
decide as to his duty by the light of present circumstances, 
not by a book written eighteen hundred years ago. Zeal 
against American slavery has thus been one of the chief 
modern foes to the Bible. Let him who would not be- 
come an infidel and atheist beware and not follow his 
sensibilities, as affected by cases of distress, in preference 

* Sab. Readings, Deut. xxxiv. 



200 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

to the word of God, which the unhappy fate of some 
who have made shipwreck of their faith in their zeal 
against slavery shows to be the best guide. 

I may be allowed to state the manner in which my 
own mind was relieved at the south with regard to the 
prospects of slavery. From youth, I had believed that 
its removal is essential to our continued existence as a 
nation, and yet no one saw in what way this change 
was to be effected. My error was in supposing that the 
blacks must be removed in order to remove slavery, or, 
that they must be emancipated ; that we must have some 
" first of August" to mark a general manumission. Now 
there are many slaveholders at the south who make 
the condition of their slaves as comfortable and happy 
as the condition of the same persons could be in any cir- 
cumstances. Wicked men are permitted by the present 
laws to practise iniquity and oppression; but when 
the influence of good men so far prevails as to make 
laws which will restrain and govern those who are 
susceptible to no influence but that of authority, the 
form of slavery will be all pertaining to it which will 
remain, and this only while it is for the highest good 
of all concerned, and acknowledged to be so by both 
parties, the doom of the blacks, as a race, being aban- 
doned, and the interests of each individual, his inclina- 
tion and aptitude, being regarded in finding employ- 
ment for him. I saw that if good men at the south 
were left to themselves without annoyance by foreign in- 
tervention, the spirit of the New Testament with regard 
to slavery might ere long be fulfilled. Nor would the 
Old Testament jubilee, or seventh year release, be 
necessary ; these, like other things in Moses, being done 
away in Christ by the bestowal of liberty, or protection 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 201 

under Christian masters ; no ceremonial, therefore, being 
needed to effect or announce their liberty, and jubilees 
and seventh years, indeed, not coming fast enough, and 
being too formal for the times. Let us feel and act frater- 
nally with regard to the south, defend them against inter- 
ference, abstain from every thing assuming and dictatorial, 
leave them to manage their institution in view of their 
accountability to God, and, if we please, in view of the 
line upon line and precept upon precept which we, their 
many and very capable instructors, male and female, 
have vouchsafed to them, and we may exjDCct that Amer- 
ican slavery will cease to be any thing but a means of 
good to the African race. When no longer available 
for good, the form itself will be abolished. 

Suppose that we should receive a report from mission- 
aries giving an account of three millions of people 
brought out of heathenism and elevated to the position 
of the slaves in our Southern States. While we should 
join with the missionaries to de^^lore remaining evils 
and certain liabilities to evil among them, we should fill 
our prayers with praises at the marvelous work of grace 
among that people. And were the foreign lords of that 
people generally in favor of their improvement, and 
very many of them examples of all kindness and faith- 
fulness, we should be careful how we interfered with the 
leaven which was leavening, slowly, but surely, the whole 
mass of the population. Some, however, as now, would 
wish to precipitate the process. 

In addition to what has been said of the way in which 
the gospel will affect slavery, it may be observed that 
common humanity, self-interest, and law may, each in 
its own method, do all the good in its power, without 
waiting for the higher motives of spiritual religion. 



202 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAYERT. 

Nor are we to neglect or disparage means and measures 
which tend to good, though actuated merely by considera- 
tions of policy. Yet spiritual religion is God's chosen 
instrument of doing the greatest amount of good in the 
best possible way. It puts every thing at work for its 
object ; it purifies our motives ; it makes the result per- 
manent ; it saves men from the temptations incident to 
victory and defeat. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 203 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FEELINGS OF SLAVES, AND FEELINGS FOR THE 
SLAVES, CONTRASTED. 

The feelings and language of some leading opposers 
of slavery are greatly to be deplored for the bad effect 
which they have upon the country and upon the best 
interests of the slave. No one can be at the south for 
a while and not feel that the spirit, language, and meas- 
ures of such men are very hurtful, being not only use- 
less, but positively frustrating the good which is profess- 
edly sought. 

At the south, after reading the report of an abolition 
meeting in New York in May last, at which the speak- . 
ers seemed to be in throes of anguish on account of 
slavery, and were for dissolving the Union, declaring also 
the Christian church to be the great defender of the 
greatest of sins, and representing the house of bondage 
at the south as a universal mass of corruption through 
festering sins and wounds, I happened to attend a re- 
ligious meeting of slaves on the Sabbath. Their pas- 
tor, a white man, preached a sermon to them on the 
assurance of Christian hope. They stood up to sing. 
Such was the evident contrast between the report of 
the meeting in New York, with its infidelity and almost 
blasphemy, and this company of worshiping slaves, that 
it seemed to me, could that song of the slaves have 
broken in upon the abolition meeting, it would have 
been to it almost as when one in another place " saw 



204 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

Abraham afar off and Lazarus in liis bosom." The 
pastor from the pulpit called on one of the colored men 
to conclude with prayer. He kneeled before a seat in 
the aisle, an elderly negro with a gray head, and seemed 
to forget that there was any ear but that of God that 
listened to his humble, earnest prayer. Thus, while 
some are burning the Constitution and pulling down the 
fabric of the American Union to rid themselves of sla- 
very, the great plan of human redemption, as it respects 
the African race, is proceeding noiselessly at the south, 
and there is joy more frequently perhaps in the pres- 
ence of the angels of God over a penitent sinner there 
than among the same number of souls in any part of 
our land. One of the best of men, who ministers to a 
church having on its list twenty-seven hundred blacks, 
writes to me, " In the church I serve there are some 
of the most beautiful specimens of Christian character 
I ever saw. Often have I witnessed the calm, intelli- 
gent, triumphant death bed, and have said in my soul, I 
shall not be fit to sit at the feet of these in heaven. I 
experience from them great affection, and regret most 
deeply that, as reputation among men can not operate as 
an incentive to preparation, I have not a more simple 
love to Christ and souls to urge me to diligence in 
studying for the pulpit." 

A slave, with a subdued, touching face, stood up one 
evening in a prayer meeting of the colored people, and 
broke the silence by repeating two lines at a time of the 
hymn beginning thus : — 

" How sad our state by nature is ! 
Our sin how deep it stains ! 
And Satan binds our captive minds 
Fast in his slavish chains. 

" But there's a voice of sovereign grace," &c. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 205 

It would seem strange to many tliat a slave should 
feel that there are " chains " more to be dejDlored than 
those of southern slavery ; but they would find in the 
religious meetings of the colored people that there is 
a bondage which, in the view of the slaves, would more 
appropriately be the subject of certain conventions which 
have been held, tlian American slavery — a bondage which 
makes infidel opposers of slavery proper objects of com- 
passion and subjects of j^rayer with the slaves as they 
look down with concern from their religious assemblies 
upon those unbelievers who meet to pity them. 

Tens of. thousands among them feel and speak as 
one of them did to whom in conversation I ventured to 
put the question wliether he would like to be free. 
Twisting the withes of old grape vines around the ends 
of rails in mending a fence, he thought a moment, 
turned his face toward me, while he held a rail, half 
tied, in its place, and emj)hasizing his words with motions 
of his head, he replied, each word being deliberately 
separated from the rest : " I want to be free from my 
sins ; them's all my burden ; and if I can get that, the 
balance of the rest may go from me." We Avere in the 
woods alone ; I had spoken of heaven ; he feared he 
should " never see that happy place ; " I spoke of par- 
don through Christ ; his hopes revived ; he promised 
that he would look to Christ alone for salvation, and 
after I had gone from him some way, he broke out 
with the well-known tune of Ortonville : — 

** Majestic sweetness sits enthroned 
Upon the Saviour's brow." 

The woods were filled with his powerful voice. I 
thought of those words, which can seldom be quoted at 



206 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAYERT. 

the present day with safety to one's reputation as being 
" right on the subject of slavery," but which were illus- 
trated in him — " Art thou called being a servant ? 
care not for it." Paul evidently was not so much dis- 
tressed in his mind about slavery and the slaves, as 
some of us are who know less about slavery than he, 
and feel far less than he what it is to be " called." 

We frequently hear it said, referring to the duty of re- 
moving slavery, that we must break every yoke. Many 
who say this reckon that in the United States there are 
three million two hundred and four thousand three hun- 
dred and thirteen " yokes," this being the number of 
slaves. 

Now, you can not pass through the south and not see 
that a very large number may at once be struck from 
this reckoning of yokes ; that there are very many slaves 
who, if you should propose to break a " yoke " for them, 
would not understand you. The question is not as to 
enslaving a new people ; nor does it relate to the An- 
tilles, nor to Guiana, nor to Mexico ; it relates to these 
people who are here ; and the proper question is not an 
abstract one with regard to slavery, but what is best for 
this people in their circumstances. The troubles which 
we impute to their condition are many of them like the 
most of our own, viz., " borrowed troubles ; " we make 
them in our thoughts bear the burdens of all the possi- 
ble evils which theoretically belong to the system of 
slavery. Even if we take all these into view, the amount 
of happiness among them compares favorably with that 
among the same number of people elsewhere. If there 
are some evils to which they are exposed, there are 
others from which they are exempt. The feeling in- 
voluntarily arose within me at the south, and especially 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 207 

in the religious meetings of the slaves, Would that 
all Africa were here ! Could villages and tribes of 
Africans be by any means induced to emigrate to this 
land, and be placed under the influences whi^h the 
slaves enjoy, Ethiopia would stretch out her hands to God 
sooner than the most sanguine interpreters of prophecy 
now dare to hope. It is deeply affecting to hear 
the slaves give thanks in their prayers that they have 
not been left like the heathen who know not God, 
but are raised, as it were, to heaven in their Christian 
privileges. 

14 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIE\Y OF SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

CHEERFUL VIEWS.— CONCLUSION. 

We ought to be the haj^piest people on earth. The 
strongest mutual afFection should exist between the dif- 
ferent parts of a country constituted as we are. Our 
family of States, so many sovereignties governing them- 
selves, yet consenting to be governed, like constellations, 
each with its own order and laws, but all obeying one 
great rule, suggesting, as organized communities, more 
than any other nation, the divine pattern of the tribes 
in the Hebrew commonwealth ; our heroic origin sur- 
passing even the fabulous romantic beginnings of other 
nations, but superior to them in its pious and benevolent 
motives ; the names of our States holding charmed asso- 
ciations of adventure and exploit, the Indian relics, 
shrined in the names, growing more and more interest- 
ing with age ; our enthusiastic union in times of peril ; 
the reception, one by one, of new members into the house- 
hold, and thereupon one star after another quietly taking 
its place in the field of our flag ; the beautiful respect 
paid to the humblest member of the family by her 
equality of representation in the Senate with the proud- 
est State ; our territory compassed overhead by such a 
zone and around by oceans, yet the sea shores exceeded 
by the coasts of navigable inland lakes ; our rivers ; our 
soil adapted to almost every culture ; the absence of 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 209 

social disabilities, and the political equality of the citi- 
zens ; our freedom of faith and speech ; our rulers 
chosen by the people ; our ability to receive and pro- 
tect the oppressed of other lands ; our schools, our Sab- 
bath, our vigorous manhood, reached at the period of 
the %Yorld's history when we can be preeminently useful 
by our example and influence, — bring together more 
elements of happiness for a nation than are elsewhere 
found. 

It might well be said to us, "Beloved, if God so 
loved us. we ought also to love one another." 

The providence of God, as it shall unfold with regard 
to the African race, will no doubt greatly affect our 
hearts. We are apprehending trouble and sorrow on 
account of this people. In the abyss of the future we 
hear such confused noises as might have been heard in 
the sounding deej) of chaos, when mountains and seas 
were jostling into their places. Order was asserting her 
sway, and at the present time, vrhile " chains and sla- 
very " fill the ears and appall the hearts of many, some 
great development of providence with regard to the Afri- 
can race may be approaching. Let us settle this in our 
minds, that progress and improvement are to be the rule 
of human destiny, and let us have patience one with 
another. Never, we are constrained to think, could 
slavery have existed so long amidst such influences of 
Christianity as prevail in this country, and such efforts 
of the southern people themselves to abolish it, were it 
not that God intends to use us as the chief instruments 
of good to the African race. Therefore he has suffered 
us to be greatly afilicted on account of them ; and now 
he may be leading us to the brink of ruin by our con- 
nection with this people, to show us that we must unite 



210 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

to redeem and bless them, if it be only for our own pres- 
ervation. Their increase has averaged in each ten 
years four or five per centum more than that of the 
whites. Had it not been for the foreign immigration 
of white persons, they would have been in 1850 nearer 
to an equality with the whites by three hundred and 
fifty or four hundred, thousand. The time must come 
when the slaves will outnumber the w^hites in some dis- 
tricts of the country. A leader only will be necessary 
to place them in a position in which they can make their 
own terras with us. Surely we are bound by sentiments 
of common human brotherhood, not to say by ties of 
country, to look upon the south not as an enemy, but as 
one whom we would invite and encourage to lead our 
efforts in union with theirs in behalf of this people.* 

We turn to our southern brethren and friends, there- 
fore, and with no obtrusive zeal we beg them to let us 
stand related to them, and to this subject, as their 
friends and brethren ; not repelling us, but encouraging 
every sign of desire to promote a good understanding. 
Let us together wait and hope till Providence discloses 
ways of doing good to the African race, in which we 
shall have been prepared to cooperate by a j)revious 
cultivation of mutual good feelings. God will not leave 
us always to contend together. "The north and the 
south, thou hast created them ; Tabor and Hermon shall 
rejoice in thy name." 

A young missionary from the south was embarking 
for Africa. His mother was taking leave of him ; her 

* See some valuable statistics with regard to the blacks in this 
country, in several articles in the Boston Courier, ending March 2, 
1853, understood to be from the pen of Dr. J. Chickering. 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 211 

arms were round his neck. She cried, ^iO Granville, 
Granville, my dear son, how can I give you up ! " The 
son, without embracing his mother, stood, and lifted his 
arms above her, and stretched them out beyond her, and 
cried, louder than his mother, " Africa, Africa, how 
can I give you up ! " At foreign missionary meetings in 
the Southern States I noticed that African missions in- 
terested the people most deeply. The south is best 
qualified to lead the whole country in plans and efforts 
for the African race. We will follow her. 

In the first part of this book I have spoken of a choir 
whose performances were not so cultivated as edifying ; 
but there was one occasion, when, in listening to the per- 
formances of a colored choir on the Sabbath, it is no 
exaggeration to say that I enjoyed more than in the per- 
formance of sacred music at any time by any other choir, 
such was the perfect time, accentuation, judicious stress, 
varied movement, and just conception of the sentiments 
of the hymns sung by fifteen voices of remarkable va- 
riety. One development of African talent hereafter 
will no doubt be in music. Even now we have illus- 
trations of the power which some of their popular airs 
have over the common mind in whistling boys, and 
raiUtary bands, and the merry making parlor music. 
The colored people will give us music of a natural 
order, full of genuine feeling, opening its way directly 
to the general heart. Their voices probably surpass all 
voices known to us in sweetness, compass, and power ; 
male tenor voices, so rare among us, abound among them ;, 
large additions to human happiness await us from this 
source, under proper cultivation. In the choir now al- 
luded to there was a man whose voice was like a reed 



212 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 

instrument ; and in other choirs and meetings no such 
vocal phenomena have ever occurred to me as among 
the blacks. This choir sung a hymn, a voluntai*y per- 
formance, at the opening of public worship, which in the 
state of mind with which I was thinking of the slaves, 
seemed as though I was hearing it sung to them by 
those who sung over Bethlehem at the nativity. That 
slaves, — though a few of this choir were free, — that 
these representatives of Africa, should sing this hymn 
with perfect skill and deep feeling, seemed beautifully 
prophetic. The tune was " Marton," in Cantica Lau- 
dis: — 

" On the mountain top appearing, 
Lo, the sacred herald stands, 
Joyful news to Zion bearing, 
Zion long in captive lands. 
Mourning captive ! 
God himself -will loose thy bands. 

" Lo, thy sun is risen in glory ; 

God himself appears thy friend ; 
All thy foes shall flee before thee ; 
Here their boasted triumphs end. 
Great deliverance I 
Zion's King vouchsafes to send. 

" Enemies no more shall trouble ; 

All thy wrongs shall be redressed ; 
For thy shame thou shalt have double, 
In thy Maker's favor blest. 
All thy conflicts 
End in an eternal rest." 

Those who wait for the consolation of Africa, and who 
love to sing, can make this hymn and tune keep fresh 
their best affections for that people, and help their peti- 
tions for the approach of the time when "for then- shame 



A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 213 

they shtill have double, and for confusion they shall 
rejoice in their portion." 

If the nations of the earth celebrate in heaven their 
national experiences under the providence and grace of 
God, Africa's song will probably do as much as any to 
illustrate them. But who will write Africa's hymn? 
What mysteries of providence and grace, what remem- 
brances of woe, what corresponding heights of joy and 
bhss, what forgiveness and love, what adoration, what 
sweet affections born of chastisement, what appreciation 
of heaven, with its liberty, and equality, and recompense 
of patient suffering, will that hymn contain, and with 
what voices will it be sung! No man can learn that 
song, no man can write it, but some African slave. "We 
from America shall hsten to that song with feelings unlike 
those of any other nation. 

If there were truth in the fancy that angels are per- 
mitted to invent flowers, he must have been the most 
original, and the most to be wondered at, who invented 
the cactus, the rough, misshapen thing, which puts forth 
a flower surpassed by nothing in the kingdom of nature. 
As though to vex and repel for a time, and then to as- 
tonish, and to .secure the love and care of woman ; as 
though it were a hieroglyphic, coarse in its engraving 
and exquisite in its sense ; an emblem of God's afflictions 
and their fruits in those whom he loves ; a promise vege- 
tating ; faith, having no sight ; hope, with the reward of 
patience concealed in it, — this cactus always impressed 
me more than any other plant. TVTien, at the south, I 
spent a morning in a burying ground of the colored 
people, reading the simple, touching inscriptions, — 

" Their names, their years, spelt by the unlettered muse," — 



214 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. / ^ 

and saw, all about in the grass, the prickly pear, embryo 
cactuses, gathering round the graves of the slave=', I felt 
no need of one to interpret for me. The deep murmur 
in the tops of the pines overhead, with the birds singing 
in the branches, comported well with the discovery of 
this token of present, thorny sorrow, this emblem of 
Africa in her past history and her coming beauty, and 
in the love which she is to win from all hearts. 



THE END. 






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